


Void

by waxjism



Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-01-26
Updated: 2002-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:31:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 73,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waxjism/pseuds/waxjism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, completely ignoring the fact that The Faculty is sort of a science fiction/horror type film... Although perhaps three teenagers having this kind of sex life is a bit of science fiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Push

He never samples his own junk. He doesn't need to get high; he can sail away on his own if he wants to. He meditates often, alone in the dusty house, and flies over rooftops and chimneys. He drives very fast and thinks, who needs drugs when you can get the bitter, exhilarating flood of adrenaline with nothing but a stamp on the gas pedal?

The high school men's room is filthy and dank - it looks like the crapper in some seedy corner bar. "Home, sweet home," Zeke mumbles and makes his rounds, checking for eavesdroppers, junkies, masturbators and other unwanted ears and eyes. He finds an unflushed toilet with a used condom floating listlessly in the bowl. He doesn't pull it, just cracks his neck and moves on.

The last stall is locked. "Hey," he says, rapping sharply on the door. "Get the fuck outta there."

There's no reply. He shuffles back a little and bows down to look for feet. There are none. He bangs on the door and the whole row of stalls shudder and clang. He looks around at the dung-brown walls, the stained mirrors, the wet floor. "You got five seconds before I bust in there and kick your ass," he says a little distractedly. He has a small screwdriver in his pocket for cases like this, and the simple locks are no match.

He thinks he hears a soft sound just before the lock clicks open, and he cocks his head and listens. Then he gives it a sharp nudge and it falls open.

He finds that little dweeb Casey Connor curled up on the seat of the toilet, much like a Chihuahua puppy after a good round with the rolled-up newspaper. Bulging, wet eyes, trembling paws - he's a dead ringer. He's also nursing a bloody nose.

Zeke's mother once had a Chihuahua named Gordon. Zeke remembers it falling off the sofa one day and breaking a leg.

Casey sniffs and shoots him a glance that's probably meant to be vitriolic. Zeke snorts and says, "Surprise. Now scoot." Casey cringes back and curls up even tighter.

"I got a right to be here," he mutters, and when Zeke makes a move, he actually gives him the finger and shows teeth, a little puppydog snarl, stained red and wet.

"And I got a right to kick your ass, cause I'm bigger than you," Zeke says.

"Fuck you," he says, but it sounds like a plea and he's looking down now, hiding his eyes and the blood on his face.

Zeke catches him by the wrist and wrenches his hand from his face, just hard enough to make him wince and recoil. His head is pressed against the wall and he might be praying for it to let him just sink in and disappear. Zeke can't help but let a smile grow on his face. Sometimes, it's just so _easy_.

This is what he's always doing: pushing it. Pushing just to see what will give, how far it will give before it snaps. Teachers, his parents, the law, his car, his grades. Little miserable Casey Connor.

He could probably change if he wanted to. He might even change Casey: shake him a little and tell him to fight back, stand up, be a man and not a mouse. He even thinks about it for a second; thinks about being careful for once, picking up a stray and nursing it back to health. That might be different, at least.

Then Casey closes his eyes. Zeke stares at his smooth, vulnerable eyelids and his small mouth twisted in fear. He gives himself one second to analyse his own reaction: sympathy, contempt, malice, desire, anger.

Desire?

He doesn't sample his own junk, but there are other ways to get high. Some people just need a tiny, little, light...push.

He listens for a second to the footsteps and voices outside the restroom door, but they're hidden from view here and no one would come in without treading carefully - this is his domain. And he leans in, not too quickly, and licks at the blood on Casey's trembling mouth. Leans back and watches his eyes fly open.

Only the tiniest little push, and Casey's slack-jawed and melting against the wall, limp in Zeke's hands. Zeke steps in and pulls the stall door closed behind him.

Casey can't seem to turn away, but he tries hard and gets out a quavering, "No, wait-- Fuck YOU, Zeke--" that doesn't convince.

Zeke licks him again, prods the cut lip with his tongue and feels a shiver travel through Casey. "You're always asking for it," he murmurs softly. Casey finally turns his head away. "They'd leave you alone if you fought back just once."

He's still got a thin wrist caught in his hand, and he puts on a little pressure, makes the bones roll and creak against each other.

He uses his other hand to turn Casey's face back, digs his fingers into his jaw and says, right into his open mouth, "Fight back, just ONCE," and drops the hand down, his fingers skidding over Casey's ugly shirt, down to his crotch to find what he expected; gives it a good squeeze and waits for the reaction.

Casey explodes into action, like a desperate wild animal hurling itself against a closed gate. His knees buckle a little and then one comes up and, amazingly, finds Zeke's groin with a sharp push.

"FUCK!" Zeke says and backs off, just one step, but it's enough and Casey tears loose. Right, this should teach him not to fuck around with geeks; they sometimes do surprise you. Zeke likes surprises, but most of the time they're really more hassle than they're worth--

Casey doesn't run.

He stands frozen for one, two, three seconds, pulling in shallow breaths between his teeth, and then he lunges at Zeke, fists and knees first, just barely avoiding stumbling on the toilet. Zeke's too stunned to fight back at first, and then he can't get his hands up because Casey's wound himself around him, has him pushed against the fucking WALL, in fact.

This was certainly somewhat unexpected. Zeke even forgives him the knee to his balls. He twists his head and slides his mouth over Casey's furious face, finds hot cheeks and wet mouth and sweaty neck, finds the copper-penny tang of blood, the ocean-salt taste of tears, the faint bitterness of adrenaline-laced sweat.

Casey squirms against him and Zeke has a moment of self-realisation: this isn't just an intellectual exercise for him anymore. His hands are pinned to his sides, but he forces them up and gets his fingers on Casey's stomach. Casey's shirt has ridden up and there's soft skin and the sharp wing of hipbone when Zeke lets his fingertips travel down. Casey pants into his ear, short, sharp, hissing breaths and muffled words buried somewhere in every gust of air.

It takes far too much of an effort to wrench himself out of his prison of clinging Casey, but it's worth it. He has Casey by the arms and lifts him and swivels. The walls clatter loudly. As soon as he's caught fast between the rickety stall wall and Zeke, Casey scrabbles for Zeke, gets under his shirt with fingers curled into claws. He might have left welts on Zeke's sides and chest if his fingernails hadn't been chewed to the quick.

Yeah, some people only need the slightest _nudge_ to crack. Zeke's felt frustrated all week - just a little off kilter, jittery. Dry-humping a nerd against a toilet wall isn't the most orthodox cure for that itch, but it'll do in a pinch.

He gets a knee in between Casey's legs, pushes them apart and presses even closer. He feels teeth on the side of his face, sharp rabbit nibbles on the line of his jaw, and it's almost, almost a surprise when his hips thrust forward hard enough to get a throaty groan from Casey. He takes a second, concentrates on controlling his breathing and lets Casey frantically mouth his face, claw at his side and squirm under him, whimper in his ear. There's something about this that's disturbing, an itch, a nagging in the back of his head. I need to get laid more, he thinks, and then Casey pushes his hand down the front of his pants and his back arches involuntarily. He pushes against the hand, hard, and his hands clutch at Casey's arms, making his fingers ache, reminding him that this is getting out of control, out of _his_ control. He's not ready to go there yet, not ready to let anyone else take charge of the proceedings.

He might have growled, because his throat shudders with something, and he shifts, bends his knees and slams his shoulder against Casey's bony chest, slaps a hand over his mouth and sets the pace himself, rubs himself against Casey's leg - frustrating, awkwardly-angled thrusts, and Casey quivering and snapping for breath; now THAT is hot and Zeke's back on top.

And he can admit now that it's hotter than he would have imagined - maybe mostly because there's no way he could do this with a chick, grab her this viciously and still have her reluctantly comply, biting his fingers but unable to stop pushing for more. Hidden depths in this nerd, a sort of rubbery resilience that probably comes from being beaten up every day of his entire pathetic life.

Hot also because Casey's bony but soft-skinned, light and small and his eyes in extreme close-up seem almost unnaturally bright blue. He's hard and eager against Zeke's crotch, sharp and struggling against Zeke's hand - he's biting for real, might be drawing blood, but right now, Zeke can't really give a rat's ass, he's getting off on this, even as he awkwardly pushes Casey's hand away to fumble with stubborn belt buckles and button flies.

Casey has sharp teeth and blunt fingers. Zeke lets him touch, as much as he can in this position - his feet are still dangling a few inches over the floor when they're not kicking at Zeke's legs; he probably can't breathe very well. He wheezes like a sick horse and chokes and Zeke's hand is wet with blood and spit and tears. Zeke's other hand is sticky and sliding over silky-wet skin, getting paid in jerky thrusts and more wheezing.

It's fucking great.

He wonders if maybe he's pushing himself, too. He moves his hand from Casey's mouth and replaces it with his own mouth, kisses deep, wet, hard.

Casey screams, a reedy, muffled sound that vibrates on Zeke's tongue, and comes with a shudder.

He hangs limp then, a damp rag doll for Zeke to thrust against. Zeke can think enough to fumble along the wall and grab a wad of toilet paper. Casey can run around school for the rest of the day with a come stain on his pants, but Zeke has a reputation to uphold.

This probably isn't in keeping with his reputation, though, but Casey's fingers are curled around his cock - surprisingly bold grip - and Zeke keeps him pushed against the wall and slams himself into Casey, slam, slam, sweet pressure and a hint of scratch, and the taste of blood and salt on his tongue, Casey's teeth grinding against his lips, Casey's harsh, whistling breaths in his ears. Molten heat pooling, biting rush coursing downwards and he hasn't done it like this before, he realises, never this far over the edge, and he likes it, likes the feeling of not having to give a fuck. That's the best feeling in the world, and it's been missing from his sex life.

It grows so fast; back-bending fucking high, he almost doesn't get Casey's hand pushed out of the way to catch his come in the toilet paper. He chokes his groan with Casey's mouth.

"Whoah," he mumbles, and lets Casey go. Casey crumples into a pile on the floor, snapping for breath and rubbing his face mindlessly. Zeke thinks, _broken toy,_ and doesn't feel bad. He's too busy getting his breath back and riding the aftershocks.

"Fuck," Casey says softly, miserably. "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

"What are you whining about? You got off--"

Casey lifts his eyes to Zeke and Zeke almost flinches. He's still a little breathless, a little slow, and he doesn't have time to react when Casey throws himself to his feet and hisses, "Fuck you." Unoriginal, but with enough desperate hate that Zeke feels it.

Then Casey twists his face into a sneer, spits a wad of bloody phlegm into Zeke's face and runs out of the stall, leaving the door banging on its hinges and Zeke stunned and speechless.

He leans against the wall and pulls up his pants, buckles his belt, throws the sopping paper into the bowl. Wipes his face gingerly and feels swollen lips and a stinging cut on the inside of his mouth.

He pushed, all right.

He ambles out of the stall and goes to wash his hands. No sign of Casey, but the door opens as he's letting cold water soothe the teeth marks on his hand.

"Whoah, man, Zeke," Stan Rosado says, "that fucking Casey Connor just ran straight into me--"

Silence. Zeke turns to face himself in the mirror, and he looks like hell. Flushed and puffy and goddamn if there isn't a stain on his pants anyway. Casey must have come all over the place.

"What the fuck did you do to him?" Stan asks. "You look like--"

"Never mind," Zeke says and turns off the faucet. "Just a little issue we had to clear up."

He pushes past Stan, out of the restroom and walks through the corridor towards the front doors. He's almost there when he realises he's been walking with his head bowed down and his shoulders hunched. He's seen Casey creeping like that through the halls of this school for four years.

Fuck this. He knows when it's time to bail, and that time is now. His legs feel weak and he's developed a headache. The sunlight stings his eyes and he misses his sunglasses. He left them in the car.

Coach Willis has caught Casey by the scruff of his neck down by the steps - Casey's squirming and has his hands crossed in front of him, his head tucked against his chest. He's shockingly pale, with two bright blooms of heated red crowning his cheekbones. When Zeke passes them, he looks up and meets his eyes.

Zeke walks on. He hears someone calling his name - probably Coach Willis. He doesn't stop. His car is his refuge, hot and fast and ready to take him anywhere.

He slams it into gear and peels out of the lot. He doesn't look for Casey in the rear-view mirror.


	2. Shove

_He's clutching his bag close to his chest, head down and eyes fixed on the floor, and he doesn't see the foot until he's stumbled over it. Zeke stops and leans against the wall, watches through the corner of his eye. _

Casey is a bleeder - it only takes a light jab to his nose and he's dripping blood, swallowing frantically and holding his hands over his face. They pull him up by the clothes, tearing seams and exposing winter pale skin and fading bruises. Zeke breathes slowly, forcing it slower. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Casey cries something incoherent, and they drop him on the ground, push him over, hands on his feebly struggling body. He bites off a real scream when someone grabs him by the arm.

Zeke jerks off in the bathroom during English; lazy strokes, leaning his head against the graffitied wall.

*

The problem with his room, Casey thinks, is that it's never been a safe place. He has things he'd rather not share with his parents, but they have no compunctions about walking in without knocking. There are limits to how long he can spend in the bathroom without awaking suspicions.

The ninety minutes between the end of the school day and the end of his parents' workday are his own. Time to splash cold water on his face and scrub the dirt out of his hair. There's a cut at the back of his scalp, a small clot of dried blood that crumbles between his fingers, and a sore welt. Probably scraped against a pebble on the floor. He'd been too busy keeping his face from getting kicked in to notice.

He opens a fresh notepad on the computer and writes: 5th Nov. nosebleed - Roger Watson, fist. Shallow cut, back of the head - all of the fuckers, floor.

He saves it in a locked folder. He's got a log of every single bruise, cut and scratch, starting with the first day of his freshman year. There's only one he hasn't written down. It's healing already - a scratch on the inside of his lip, from teeth. Zeke's teeth. He can't stop poking at it with his tongue. Every time he does, there's a tiny burn in the pit of his stomach, a quick fluttering; like a butterfly with radioactive wings.

He shuts his eyes tightly, tight enough to make his face hurt, and slides his hand into his pants, quickly. He still feels ashamed about touching himself; he can't figure out why, but he can't stop it, either. Touching himself and thinking about Zeke biting his lip makes it worse. Or better. Both.

He sucks his lower lip between his teeth and bites down lightly. The wound opens again, little pain, taste of metal, and he changes his grip and makes the strokes harder, almost too hard. He keeps his eyes closed.

The front door opens and his mother's voice calls his name. He yanks his hand out of his pants and breathes deeply to get out of the jerk-off headspace and back into good-son mode. "Hi, mom!" he yells.

"I'm not deaf, honey," she says, but he hears her smile. He washes his hands before he goes to help with dinner.

*

"How was school?" his dad asks when they're all chomping on pork chops and veggies to the mellow tunes of Barry Manilow.

"Sucked," Casey mutters into his pile of overcooked carrots.

"What's that?"

"It was fine. Professor Furlong thinks we might go to St Paul for the science fair next semester."

"That's nice, honey," his mother says.

"The Hornets are playing tonight," his dad says. Casey pretends to have his mouth full.

He's cleaned his plate and is making his getaway when the doorbell rings. His mother goes to open the door and he takes the opportunity to slink upstairs.

Blessed calm in his room; nothing but the comforting hum of the mac and whatever moves in his brain. He feels restless and jittery and thinks about taking an extended shower. It's too early, though: he'll get looks from his mother and knowing smirks from his father, and he can't handle that today. They have no idea, none at all.

He looks at the pictures of Delilah on his wall. He's taken all of them. His dad smiles when he sees them, the same smile as when he found his porn mags, the ones under his mattress - and he's heard his parents talk about it one time. His mother's voice, chipper and pleased, "It's so nice to know he's meeting girls. Maybe he'll bring her home," and his dad: "At least he's normal that way, thank God."

Casey thinks about Zeke and stares at Delilah. She's a pipe dream with glossy hair and perfect make up, the honey-skinned star of his dreams for years. Zeke's brutal reality and nightmare fodder.

"Casey?" his mother calls from downstairs. He's tuned out the voices - he's not interested in visitors. The neighbours, probably. Old and nosy and always asking him about school, about friends and girlfriends, about all the things he'd rather not talk about.

He contemplates ignoring her, but finally yells, "What?" She's stubborn, and he doesn't want her bursting in here to scream in his ear.

"Your friend's here!"

He sits up. "My-- what did you say?" He can count his friends on one finger, and Carlton moved to California two years ago. He's stopped answering his emails.

"Your friend, honey." She asks something of the visitor and Casey hears an answer. He doesn't recognise the voice immediately, but his skin is crawling and he _knows_ this is bad news. "Oh, right. Your friend Zeke," his mom says and he stops breathing for a while.

Footsteps on the stairs; his mother's clip clap of heels, followed by the light treads of sneakered feet. Casey sits numb and helpless in his chair. The window is closed, and there's no way he'd make it out before--

"--in here. Maybe I'll bring you up some sodas, Zeke, how about that?" His mother is smiling when she opens the door, a happy smile. No idea, she has no fucking clue, Casey thinks, and Zeke steps into the room.

"Hi, Casey," he says, amiably. "I thought I'd come by to entertain you."

"Lovely, lovely," Casey's mother says. "I'll be downstairs, boys."

She's gone and he's stuck. Utterly trapped. He can't move. Zeke smirks at him. "Nice pad, mind if I look around?" He pokes through the books on the bookshelves.

He has a Band-Aid on his hand, and Casey realises that it's covering teeth marks. The thought makes him sick to his stomach, sick and scared and excited and weak.

Zeke's found Delilah on the wall, he's poking at the pictures, at a candid one Casey took with the zoom lens when Delilah was spreading her legs in a split, laughing and lifting her arms, surrounded by slightly blurred cheerleaders.

"Hot," Zeke says. Casey stares at his hands. He's bitten the nail on his left thumb past the quick and it hurts. "Stalker tendencies, Casey?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Going through your stuff," Zeke says without turning away from the wall of Delilah pictures. "Yeah, hot shit. Wish she wasn't fucking Stan the jock? Wish he wasn't the one who gets to slide those tiny skirts up and--"

"Shut up," Casey says, but it comes out a whisper. His face burns; so much heat that he thinks his eyes might boil in their sockets.

"Okay," Zeke says. He walks around the room and Casey waits.

Zeke lifts the mattress and finds the decoy Playboys. "Boring, boring, boring... Miss July is tasty, though..."

Casey waits. Zeke is a professional snoop, like Delilah - the one thing they have in common. Casey can't decide which would be worse; Delilah going through his stuff, or Zeke. It doesn't matter. Zeke's already here, and he's just dropped onto all fours to peek under the bed. He's more thorough than Casey's parents.

He's humming under his breath, a tuneless little jingle. Then he breaks off and Casey knows he's found the compartment. There are tears stinging behind his eyelids and he screws his eyes shut.

"Oh, Casey?"

He doesn't open his eyes.

"Caaaaasey, Caseycaseycasey. Open your eyes, baby, open those big blues."

There's Zeke standing in front of him with a box in his hands, and Casey realises he obeyed without even noticing. He feels a sting of hatred, the kind that sometimes, once in a blue moon, makes it possible for him to fight back, to bite and kick and scream filth at the top of his lungs. It's waking inside him, but he can't let it out. He's left with nothing but the lazy roll of his stomach and the pool of shameful heat in his groin. Zeke's standing with his hips cocked, completely at ease and watching him with a tiny smile.

"Everyone has a secret hideyhole, don't they? Little secrets."

"Please," Casey whispers; it slinks over his lips unbidden.

"Maybe, maybe," Zeke says and opens the box. For a second, he's absolutely still. Casey blinks, and the moment's gone, Zeke's taking out the pictures and throwing them on the bed. One flutters to the floor - a shot of Zeke down by his car, leaning against the hood and grinning at someone walking by, shirt open in the heat. The sun was blazing that day and Casey was sitting on the bleachers with his camera and watched Zeke slip on his sunglasses and slide into the driver's seat of his car with the grace of long familiarity.

The picture isn't perfect - there's some overexposure and it's not quite sharp. Casey doesn't have to look closer to know that it's a little crumpled in one corner and there are fingerprints on it, smudged over the angles of Zeke's shoulders and the hollows over his collarbones.

"Aren't you just a little bundle of mysteries?" Zeke says. He's holding the porn now, the other porn that Casey's parents don't know about. The boys. He doesn't have much, but he's collected a little pile of clippings and printouts. Zeke's running his fingers over a Playgirl model's sculpted pecs. "This why you never got into sports? Too much temptation, all those jocks with their buns of steel and their locker room games? You ever get anywhere? Ever sucked cock, Casey? Don't tell me I was the first down your pants, that would just be sad, now."

"Don't--" he says. "Just."

"What? You just wanted to? Gangbang in the showers; you'd do the whole team, wouldn't you? If they'd stop beating the shit out of you every day they might figure out that there are other uses for nerds like you. What would you think about that?"

Zeke's voice is low and soft, almost hypnotic, and Casey stares at him when he drops the box on top of the photos on the bed and turns back, looks at Casey, his smile growing into a smirk.

Casey curls his hands into fists. _"Fight back,"_ Zeke told him. Hell, yeah. Maybe it's time. Maybe today is the day.

He gets up. Zeke grins wider and closes in, and Casey backs, helplessly, but preparing. Letting it build. He hits the wall and braces himself. Zeke's so close he can feel his breath on his face.

"Do you boys want some cake?" Casey's mother yells from downstairs. Zeke moves very quickly, while Casey's still reeling, and claps his hand over Casey's mouth, curls his fingers into his mouth, pushes against his teeth. Casey opens his mouth helplessly, and his hands hang limp by his sides. His breath keeps hitching, like his lungs don't want to do their job anymore. Zeke's fingers slip into his mouth and he tastes the salt on the skin mixed with a hint of motor oil.

"Just ate before I came, Mrs Connor!" Zeke shouts, his eyes holding Casey's. Then the fingers are gone from his mouth, and sliding around his neck instead. "You can touch me," he whispers. He's not smiling now; his eyes are wide. Casey can't move, can't decide anything but his hand decides for him, travels through half a foot of air and finds denim and hardness underneath.

Zeke hisses softly and says, "Suck my dick, Casey," Casey knows he'll do it. Today isn't the day he fights back, and he fumbles with Zeke's belt and the fly and drops to his knees, yielding to soft pressure on his head.

He's never seen any dick but his own this close - not even that, because he can't suck his own dick but he's putting his mouth over Zeke's, trying to suck it and gagging and trying and it's hard to breathe and his knees ache, but it tastes salty and bitter and not as bad as he would have imagined. Zeke's dick is heavy and silky on his tongue, blunt against the back of his mouth, and Zeke moves in small jerks. Casey touches what he can, while he can; even through the humiliation he knows that this is SEX, more than a handjob in the men's room. This is what he didn't think he'd get in ten years, not with his luck.

Not that he's feeling lucky.

He goes too deep and can't breathe at all for a few seconds, his nose almost pressed against the springy curls of pubic hair, his hands struggling against the smooth skin on Zeke's hips.

Zeke's hands twist in his hair, holding him down until it feels like he'll choke or puke or both, and then lets him go and he sucks in a harsh, painful breath and realises he's rock hard and aching. He drops one hand to the front of his pants and rubs because he can't not.

Zeke groans, a throaty, foreign sound, and Casey comes in his pants. Zeke shivers and thrusts against his gullet, twice, three times and then his hands tighten in Casey's hair again and Casey's mouth fills with slick, salty heat that flows over his lips and down his throat and up his nose.

He falls back, coughing and tearing up again. He swallows and only then thinks, _holy fuck, I swallowed._

Then Zeke's kneeling by him, turning his face up, gently, very gently, but Casey can't trust those hands and he can't stop his mouth from trembling or the tears or the choked whimpers. Zeke's fingers stroke his face, wipe his lips.

"Up, now," Zeke says and pulls him up. Casey sits in his chair, heavily. His head spins. The come is his pants is turning to jelly. He can feel it cooling.

Zeke sits on the bed and pulls his shirt over his open fly, and then Casey's mother's pushing the door open and saying, "I put on coffee. Will you be staying, Zeke?"

Casey wipes frantically at his mouth and bows his head, hunches his back. His mouth tastes like come and he can smell it everywhere, on his hands, his lips, everywhere. How can his mother stand there and smile? She doesn't even see the porn on the bed, the pictures or the flush on Zeke's face.

Zeke smiles beatifically and says, "No, Mrs Connor, I'm on my way home in a second. School day tomorrow. But thank you for the offer. Maybe some other time?"

"Of course! You're always welcome. Right, Casey?"

Casey can't look up to meet her eyes. He nods dully. She leaves.

They sit quietly for a while. The situation in his underwear is starting to get nasty, and finally he has to get up. Zeke follows him to the bathroom, silently, without doing up his jeans.

He stands in front of the sink. Zeke makes no move at all. Finally, Casey has to wash up right there, with Zeke's eyes crawling over him. His hands tremble. He changes underwear and gets back into his pants. Offers Zeke a washcloth.

He wonders if there's anything _beyond_ utter humiliation and if he'll reach that place anytime soon. His back feels weak and bent and he waits with his eyes fixed on his toes.

"I think I'll want those photos," Zeke says, and Casey straightens up and says,

"No!" almost against his will. His photos are his photos, he took them, he made them.

Not that anything's really his, anyway, and he waits for Zeke to ignore him and take them anyway.

Zeke raises his eyebrows. Casey looks back down.

A hand on his neck, sliding around and cupping his jaw, and then Zeke's kissing him softly, no violence here, just lips and tongue and sweetness, and Casey's crying, tasting his own tears. He's never been kissed like this before. He'd never kissed anyone before Zeke.

Then Zeke's gone with a soft, gently ominous, "Catch ya later, Case," and Casey runs back to his room and falls on the bed and bites his knuckles not to cry out loud.

*

_Delilah's talking to Casey when Zeke gets to school, two hours late. He hears the tone of voice and knows immediately, even before he sees Casey with his camera. There's a special tint of contempt in her voice, reserved for people she'd rather not have anything to do with. _

She's one of the few people who'd use that kind of voice on Zeke.

He watches Casey trail after her - he swears the guy would wag his tail if he had one - and decides that things should change.


	3. Give

Lunch hour, he goes down to the parking lot and takes pictures of cars. He has an idea for a series of shots of the cars in rows and rows - old American cars, shiny red German cars with leather interior, small, unloved Japanese cars with rusty fenders and cracks in the windshield. He takes a frontal shot of a Toyota Corolla with a broken headlight and a jagged hole in the grille.

"I know how you feel, man," he tells it and goes on to the Mercedes S-class next to it.

When he comes back to his locker, Delilah is there. "Where have you been?" she says immediately, in that tone he knows and loves - the one that says she can't believe she's actually bothering to talk to him, but she's pissed off and needs to smack someone around. "I need something on the Hornets."

He glares at her, but she's not even paying attention. Sometimes he wonders if she'd be bitching at the empty room if he wasn't there.

Then she does look at him, pins him with her eyes, in fact, and it's all worth it. "You're looking even more like a bag of wet tissues today, Casey. Did your mom forget to give you your Jell-O for lunch?"

There's no one listening just then, and it's okay. He follows her.

 

Lucas Bronheim tries to trip him when he gets up to get off the bus, but he somehow stays on his feet. He pictures Lucas in a shark tank. It doesn't help.

His street is empty, and he walks slowly, dragging his feet in dead leaves. Today, for the first time of the year, it feels like winter. He turns his face into the wind and imagines he can smell snow, like a whispered message from Canada. Snow and plains and emptiness. It doesn't sound too bad; it sounds perfect. He looks around quickly and waves at the wind, feeling a little sheepish. It flaps a brown, withered maple leaf into his face. Great, it's a sign. He walks slower.

He's half a block from his house, practically walking backwards by now, when he hears a car slow down next to him.

He looks down at his feet, at the leaves skipping along the pavement. They crunch softly under his soles. The wind is picking up and whipping his hair around. It's getting too long again. He's expecting his father to tell him to get it cut any day now.

The car pulls over. It's black, and it's Zeke's car. It's all wrong - Zeke comes around after six, always after six, when Casey's parents are home. He smiles at Casey's mother and compliments her hair. He talks politics and football with Casey's father. He calls them ma'am and sir and they have no idea that Casey just sucked him off and swallowed his come in the bathroom just up the stairs.

But now it's only a quarter past four, and Zeke's there, behind the wheel, smoking and not even looking at Casey. Casey stands next to the car. He doesn't know what to do. He can't run. He can see his house from here, dark and not particularly welcoming.

 

Maybe the worst part about all this is that it's finally been proven that he can't expect protection from his parents. He's known that for a long time but somehow, he's managed not to think about it.

Zeke tosses his cigarette out the window and waves at him. Beckons. Casey looks upwind again, feels the promise of snow on his face. He gets in the car.

Zeke doesn't speak, drives fast, chain-smokes. Casey stares out the window and clutches the door handle. Zeke's car smells like smoke and old car and Zeke. He wants to chew his nails but he's afraid to move.

Then Zeke pulls up into a drive and kills the engine. Casey has to look at him, has to ask, now, even though he really doesn't want to know. He thinks about asking "what are you going to do to me," but it doesn't seem like a good idea. So he says, "What do you want from me?"

Zeke looks at him with a strangely blank expression; the smoke draws a thin veil between them and paints him hazy and grey. "Just you," he says and gets out of the car.

Zeke's house is large and quiet. Casey walks behind him and wonders where his parents are. Zeke doesn't fit in; his worn jeans and ratty flannel shirt clash with the subdued, faded classiness of the house.

"I'm gonna make sandwiches. You hungry?" Zeke asks, and Casey almost looks around to see who he's talking to.

"I'm not hungry," he lies. His stomach is turning, empty and cramping and twisted up. His kneecaps tremble.

Zeke makes sandwiches and Casey stands in the kitchen door. "Sit down," Zeke says after a while and Casey puts his bag under the table and sits gingerly on a stool. Zeke puts a sandwich in front of him: peanut butter and jelly on full grain. Casey's stomach rolls and twitches. He presses his hands against his belly and tries to think about something else; the wind, the leaves, birds flying over the rooftops, cars meeting at a crossroads.

Zeke's hands cover his and push them aside. Casey closes his eyes and just breathes, slowly. He can hear his own heartbeat; he can feel it in his throat. Zeke slides his hands under his t-shirt and pushes it up. His fingertips skid over Casey's ribs and Casey's skin prickles and shivers in confusion, as if it can't decide whether to cleave to or cringe from the touch.

Goosebumps race up his arms, and Zeke pulls the t-shirt over his head. He takes a step back and watches Casey gravely. Casey wonders if there is any such thing as a rift in the fabric of space and time, and why one hasn't appeared in front of him so he can escape.

He gives up and hugs himself, digs his fingers into his sides and chews on his lip viciously. He might as well be completely bare ass naked; he _feels_ naked, anyway.

"Skinny," Zeke says. Casey is cold. The floor isn't very clean; he can see grimy footprints and crumbs and stains. He stares at the dirt.

Zeke touches him again; a hand on his shoulder. "What are you afraid of?" he asks, almost gently. Almost like he cares.

_Everything_, Casey thinks. He thinks about telling Zeke that. Telling Zeke things. Maybe yelling at him. Would it make any difference?

He starts to suspect he might cry. Any minute now. He stabs his index finger between two ribs and concentrates on the pain. Don't cry. His father is always embarrassed when he cries. Crying in school is a bad idea. Don't cry. Zeke's hand is warm and solid on his shoulder. Zeke's motionless, waiting. Don't cry.

He can't cry in front of Zeke. He wonders why he's not running. He should run like the wind, shirtless and mad, down this strange street - he doesn't even know what part of town they're in. Escape.

There's just nowhere to escape to, so he sits where he sits until the tears break through his tightly closed eyelids. Zeke moves his hand, then, strokes his shoulder, down his chest, his arms. Casey locks himself behind the shutters of eyelids and thinks about the wind again, snow, maybe. Wind and snow. Zeke touches his back, pushes him to his feet. Casey feels breath on his face; he keeps his eyes screwed shut, so hard he sees flashes and spiralling colours. Zeke licks the tears off his face, licks his mouth and his eyelids, his cheeks.

When Zeke kisses him his mouth opens automatically. He realises he doesn't want to run anymore. Maybe this is what happens if he keeps his eyes closed. But his eyes want to see; it's hard to keep them shut. The world reappears, with Zeke's face right there, the light from the window cut into sharp shadows by his cheekbones and nose.

Zeke isn't petting him gently anymore now, he's pulling him closer with a whisper of his usual force, and Casey's hands are twitching and want to rise and wrap themselves around Zeke. He's noticed that his hands are not reliable.

He's not even aware that they really have escaped his control until he feels soft-worn flannel under his fingers, and he's trying to unbutton Zeke's shirt, and Zeke freezes.

Casey holds his breath and waits for the punch.

Zeke's hands touch his. Casey stays still, and Zeke unbuttons the shirt himself and slides it off his shoulders. It falls to the floor.

They kiss. Casey thinks this: we're kissing. Mutual action. The strangest thing, to touch his tongue to Zeke's, to reach up and touch Zeke's chest. He doesn't know what to do; wants to scratch, wants to soothe. He can't decide, his head is spinning and so he simply leans his hands against soft skin and lean muscle underneath; feels Zeke's heartbeat between ribs, feels the expansion and contraction of the ribcage.

Zeke slides a hand down his back and further, down his pants, into his underwear. Cups his ass, and pushes him closer, and Casey's suddenly dizzy and breathless, and he does scratch, ineffectually, with his harmless stubs of nails. The kiss is already growing into something different, harsher with teeth clicking together and lips crushed between. Zeke's leg hooks one of Casey's and the world turns in its orbit and the floor rushes up to meet him. He lands roughly but not hard enough to hurt much, and Zeke's there too, holding him down and grinding him against the cold floor. He knows he's making sounds but he can't hear them, he just feels them in his throat. He aches, and he bucks against Zeke's hand when Zeke yanks at his zipper.

Zeke arches back and Casey stares at his throat and his flushed face and thinks, a single, clear flash: I could hit him now. Hit him in the throat, hard, and kick him and run like hell.

Zeke gasps and looks down at him, and the thought scatters. Kisses again, kisses and kisses and whispers and hands. He can't hear what Zeke's saying, but there are words there. Casey thinks it might be obscenities, or his name. Same difference, really, because Zeke's squirming out of his jeans and Casey's kicking at his own.

He thinks briefly about the dirty floor under his ass, but somehow it works like this, it's like it should be: trapped under Zeke's broad body, panting and pushing up, his back aching and chilled. His cock is squeezed between their bodies, rubbing against Zeke's sharp hipbone, and the friction is on this side of painful. That's as it should be, too. Zeke's mouth is hot and slick on his, Casey's fingertips ache where he digs them into Zeke's shoulders.

He throws his head back when he comes, and he hears his own cry, cracked and hoarse. Zeke covers his mouth with his own and for a few, bright-gold seconds, there is nothing uncomfortable in the world, only warm, damp skin and molten heat and wetness and good, sweet, right--

Then Zeke shoves him down again, cold floor, bones grinding together, Zeke's knee digging a bruise into his leg.

Zeke slumps over him, bears him down with his weight. His breath fans over Casey's sweaty shoulder, chilling him even more. Casey doesn't want to move. He's starting to hurt, but this place is not frightening, and if he opens his eyes and moves, he'll have to think again, he'll have to face new challenges. He stays still until Zeke stirs and rolls off.

"Hey," Zeke says. Casey blinks and sits up, crawls to his feet. His legs are weak and shivery. Zeke is looking for his clothes, pulling on his jeans. Casey follows his example. They don't speak.

He's worried that Zeke's just going to throw him out, but Zeke takes his car keys and they get in the car. Casey doesn't know what just happened. It's only five o'clock. His parents will be home in half an hour.

Zeke drops him off outside his house and drives off with squealing tires. Casey's inside and hanging up his coat when he realises that his bag is still tucked under the table in Zeke's kitchen.

"How was school, son?" his dad asks at dinner.

"Fine," he says. The pot roast and mashed potatoes taste like salt and vinegar, and he chokes them down. He can't stop thinking about his bag. His camera is in it, and he has to get it back. He doesn't know if this is good or bad; if it's giving him no choice but to see Zeke, or giving him an _excuse_ to see Zeke.

"You don't know how happy we are that you have friends again," his mother says. He rubs the small of his back where the sand on the floor scraped the skin raw.

"Yeah," he says.

*

Zeke likes to think there are very few things that genuinely scare him. Death, ageing, disease. The usual stuff, abstract and distant. He doesn't like horses, and for some reason, old ladies with lipstick on their teeth have always freaked him out in some fundamental way. He wouldn't say he's genuinely frightened of horses and old ladies, though.

His brain is starting to scare him, and _that_ scares him. He realises this when he's beating off, lying naked on top of the covers, and it's Casey again. This time, he's sitting silent in a corner of Zeke's mind, just sitting there, curled up with his arms around his knees.

Zeke thinks about the way the knobs of Casey's spine show in stark relief on the pale skin of his back. He comes. His palm aches distantly. He _wants_, he realises. He's thinking about Casey, wanting him.

"Well, fuck me," he says and gets up to wash his hands. In the bathroom, he finds an old copy of _Bizarre_ magazine and looks at pictures of dead dogs and mastectomy scars until Casey is gone.

*

He's back in the morning when Zeke stretches his legs under the kitchen table and hits something. It's Casey's ugly green bag lying innocently hidden next to a chair. Zeke makes himself eat his sandwich and drink his coffee before he picks it up.

In school, he deliberately seeks out other people - crowded places where he won't see Casey - just to test himself. He finally sees him in the cafeteria and his heart actually skips a beat. He resists banging his head against the table in frustration.

He watches Delilah instead - he knows Casey is, too. She's holding court at a central table, her ladies-in-waiting around her. Zeke thinks about pulling _her_ into a toilet and doing her against a wall. He supposes she wouldn't be quite as easy as Casey.

She catches him looking at her and her mouth curls into an expression of distaste. Definitely nowhere near as easy.

Then he turns his head, and Casey's followed her gaze to him. He looks away immediately and stumbles to his feet. Zeke likes the way he creeps along the walls, trying so hard to be invisible, the effort making him all the more eye-catching.

In English class, he tunes out Miss Burke's voice and thinks about having Casey on his bed, face down, naked. It's harder than he would have thought - he can't seem to twist his mind around it. He knows what Casey tastes like, his mouth, his tears and his blood. He knows the shape of Casey's body. It should be easy to imagine.

He's doodling little stick figures on his copy of _The Once And Future King_. He makes his stick figures get wasted and fall over. An ambulance comes to pick them up and take them to rehab. Other figures fuck, doggy style on the floor. He thinks about fucking Casey and draws a dead dog. He has lube. He knows he'll do it. It's started to feel a little too inevitable. Casey's small and narrow like a girl, but he doesn't _feel_ like a girl to touch.

"--Casey? Casey." Miss Burke has raised her voice above her usual whisper and Zeke comes out of his doze. Casey's blushing and confused - a good look on him - and stutters, "Because Arthur was in love with Lancelot and Lancelot betrayed him, and--"

Zeke's impressed. He can see it, too. Fucking on a royal bed, somewhere big and gilded - they'd need a Guinevere, someone suitable. He can think of a candidate.

The snickering in the back of the class grows to raucous laughter and someone yells, "Fags!"

"Takes one to know one," Gabe snorts and throws an eraser at Casey. Miss Burke just stands there, the stupid cow, like subtext is an entirely new concept to her.

"Read the fucking book, asshole," Zeke says and quotes, " 'There is an old saying among the Saxons, a friend is one to whom you will lend your favourite wife and your favourite sword...' " He makes a little hand gesture to get the point across. Miss Burke blanches and turns her eyes away. "It's all between the lines."

Casey's bent over his book, but Zeke catches his eyes briefly. Oh, gratitude, surprise. He goes back to thinking about fucking.

*

After English class, he spends some quality time in the restroom with a bunch of rich dopeheads who cannot get enough of the Tyler home brew. He keeps the money he makes off them in a suitcase under his bed. He hasn't used any of it since he bought his car - he likes the thought of having a suitcase full of cash. A getaway stash. Just in case.

Casey's waiting - not by Zeke's car, but at the edge of the lot, close enough to see him coming but at a safe distance. He has a scratch on his forehead and a couple dead leaves in his hair. He's clutching his books to his chest. Zeke has Casey's bag in his trunk. He could just hand it to him and leave.

He doesn't have to turn around to look to know the expression on Casey's face when he walks right past him.

Casey would probably be dirty; dust and cold sweat. He'd have to shower. Or bathe. There's a large, old-fashioned bathtub in the downstairs bathroom, lion's feet and all. Zeke fell in it once when he was ten and almost drowned. His parents loved that thing; the only piece of furniture they brought along when they moved here from Santa Cruz.

He digs his hands into his pockets. "Come on, Case," he says and hears the shuffle of feet. He has to stop himself from smirking. "You left your bag."

"I know," Casey says and gets in the car. He's still hugging his books like they're his last friends in the world. "I was gonna ask you."

I'm gonna fuck him today, Zeke thinks.

*

Casey's no problem. He makes it very easy by trailing obediently after Zeke through the house, without even asking where they're going. Maybe one day they'll find something to talk about. Zeke's not holding his breath.

He didn't make his bed before he left - he never does - and the sheets are probably not the cleanest in the world. He probably shouldn't be thinking about that. Casey's not going to care about the sheets, and even if Casey cares, Zeke won't care if he does.

He still thinks about the damn sheets. Casey stands in the door and stares at the floor. Zeke almost wants him to protest, to tell Zeke to fuck off; to try to run.

"Take off your clothes," he says, just to test. Casey meets his eyes and Zeke pretends there's defiance there.

Casey takes off his clothes. There's a tear on his shirt - a seam on a sleeve has ripped. His fingers skate over it when he folds the shirt carefully and puts it on a chair. Zeke watches, fascinated, as goosebumps grow suddenly on his arms.

Casey's eyes are downturned, but he doesn't seem put off or angry. Zeke's watched him enough to know what anger looks like on Casey's face. Like a small furry animal baring tiny sharp teeth at something large enough to squish it to death with its weight alone.

This is one part of Casey that Zeke doesn't understand. This way of just...going along. He knows there's steel under the geeky exterior, but it needs a lot to show. A lot of pushing.

Casey's wearing a Rammstein t-shirt, about fifteen sizes too large for him. Zeke doesn't even try to imagine where he got it from. He always forgets that Casey existed before he got to know him.

Casey fumbles awkwardly with his belt, and Zeke feels almost relieved to see some good old-fashioned bashfulness in him. It gives him something to pick up on; start with. He steps closer and pushes Casey down on the bed. Casey's stomach is perfectly smooth and flat, and he strokes it a little, just to feel the heat of the skin. Casey breathes faster immediately. That's one reason for keeping him around. It doesn't take much to get him going that way - it's like he's so starved for touch that a heated look already gets him hot and bothered. That neediness is reassuring. Zeke thinks, I can get him to do anything. Anything at all. Reassuring.

He strokes Casey's silky skin and says, conversationally, "I'm gonna fuck you." Casey gasps and twitches. "Say yes."

It's stuttery and hardly more than a whisper: "--yes."

Good enough. He pulls Casey's pants off. Casey lies quiet, just breathing. He turns willingly onto his stomach. Zeke strokes his back slowly, down over his ass, between his legs, downy skin, more heat. Back again. His palm likes Casey's skin. He watches the contrast of his tanned hand against Casey's milk white back.

It's getting dark in the room. The day started sunny, but the skies were darkening already when they left school, and now he can hear rain pattering on the windowpanes. He sits on the edge of the bed and Casey lies where he lies, silent and naked, like an artist's model waiting for directions.

His hand is lying flat on the curve of Casey's ass. The rain whispers and he can hear the small sounds of Casey's breaths, but everything else is quiet. Zeke's almost forgotten what he's here for. His body's forgotten. He hardly knows who this is, whose skin he's touching. The faint light in the room moves, scattered by the rivulets streaming down the window.

Casey moves against his hand, rolls over, turns to look at him. Zeke feels like he's teetering on the edge of waking. He zoned out somehow. He can't quite pull himself out of it.

He watches Casey sit up and waits for him to leave. He'll take him later, take him when he's not this strange, white-skinned thing in the broken light from the wet window.

Then Casey leans in and kisses his mouth with dry, chapped lips, lightly. Pulls back, and Zeke stares at him and thinks, out of the blue, _fuck, he's pretty._

He's never thought that before, and it takes him by surprise. Casey's a freaky-looking kid, with those weird eyes and the sharp little face, but in this alien light he seems to almost glow, gain some sort of inner peace that wasn't there before.

Ready for anything. Zeke realises that Casey is ready and he isn't, and that is _not_ a reassuring thought. What happened to his hard-earned detachment? He's sitting here admiring the lines of Casey Connor's face and dreaming away, and the world keeps turning outside.

Nothing is different, nothing at all, but Casey reaches for him with hands that don't tremble as much as they should, and Zeke lets him.

Casey's eyes are blank and distant, a little glassy; like mirror walls. Zeke finds the use of his muscles and grabs his arm, far gentler than he would have yesterday. "What are you thinking?" he asks. Stupid fucking question, stupid girl question that leads to nothing but trouble, but Casey blinks and says, "Snow. Rain. Canada," but his eyes have cleared now.

Freak, Zeke thinks. Freak. But who's the freak? He can't remember much of the last few weeks other than Casey. He's not good at lying to himself, so he has to admit that this is more than a pastime. Obsession is a pretty word for it.

He has lube. He'd thought he'd just do it, wham bam, that it wouldn't be hard. But Casey looks very small and fragile, and right now, Zeke doesn't feel like hurting him. It's ridiculous. He knows Casey doesn't break. He's bruised him and crushed him against hard things and he's just kept ticking, liked it even.

He doesn't feel like hurting him. "I'm not gonna hurt you," he tells Casey.

Casey makes a little face and says, quietly, "Don't dislocate your shoulder trying to pat yourself on the back." He still looks breakable, though. He's never talked back before. The world is moving on.

This is not going according to plan. He keeps forgetting what to do. Casey's unsettling him, and that's also not in the protocol. He was trying to imagine fucking Casey and now he knows why it was so hard. He needs to stop thinking.

He undresses quickly and tries not to feel self-conscious when Casey just looks at him. Zeke's never fucked anyone this quiet and passive. It's almost creepy.

He keeps Casey on his back, though, because he wants to see his face. He wants to make Casey see him. It doesn't feel like Casey's really there, though, even when Zeke starts pushing in. It's tight, way tight, almost painfully so, and he feels disconnected, somehow, like he's nothing but a big, aching dick and his hands and face and mouth belong to someone else. His brain doesn't feel connected to his big, aching dick, either - he doesn't feel turned on, but he's hard and his hips are pushing eagerly forward.

Casey's eyes narrow into slits. He's absolutely still, but Zeke can feel a deep tremble in him, and he's wincing between short, shallow gasps. His hands have curled into tight, white-knuckled fists.

Zeke stops. Casey doesn't move. "Why don't you--" Zeke says, not entirely sure what he's trying to say. "It must hurt like hell. Why don't you say so?"

Casey's eyes focus on him. They're dark in the gloom, dark but with a strange sheen to them. Casey has the weirdest eyes ever. "Would you care?" he says.

Zeke opens his mouth to say, "Yes," but realises that it would be such an obvious lie that Casey might actually laugh. Instead he says, "You could leave."

"Nowhere to go," Casey says and he looks like he's waiting for Zeke to go on. His hands are still in tight fists. Zeke looks at his own hands on Casey's hips and thinks they could be anyone's hands. It's a strange, humiliating feeling - he's been had by Casey. He realises he had been convinced that Casey was obsessed, too.

"Do you--" he starts, but Casey's gritting his teeth and shuddering under him, muttering something - "fuck, fuck, fuck--" - under his breath. He's angry, Zeke knows, suddenly.

He pushes deeper, then. Slowly - and Casey stays vice-tight around him, too tight. The light's almost gone by now and Casey's striped in black and grey, a faint ghost under Zeke. "You look--" he says on a slow thrust that gets him almost there but not quite, "--beautiful." Casey hisses something and turns his face away. He's awkwardly pretzeled up, bent double and his breathing is forced. "Your eyes look grey in this light. You have bigger eyes than most girls."

This time he's pretty sure Casey says, "Shut up," but it's muffled and comes out on a pained groan, so he can pretend not to have heard it. He slides his hands up Casey's sides, over his ribs - he can feel every one of them, starkly outlined, sharp slats under his fingers - his nipples, hard in the chilly air. He leans onto Casey, making himself heavy and driving himself deeper inside, puts his hand on Casey's throat and feels Casey's dick twitch against his stomach.

"You want it," he says and leans in and kisses the side of Casey's face.

"Fuck you," Casey whispers and pushes back against him, just a tiny movement. Zeke tightens his hand a fraction around his throat and Casey moves again and his mouth falls open in a gasp.

Zeke's brain is returning to his body, and he can feel Casey's body now, feel that it makes him want it. Casey's moving with him, against him, and they're not in any rhythm, just random twitches and jerks and Zeke's back is starting to ache from this position.

"You want me," he says and pushes harder. Casey doesn't answer, but he's turned his face to Zeke and his back is arching, tight as a bowstring. Zeke lets himself go. Casey's expecting it, anyway. He thinks about punching him in the mouth just to see him bleed, but it's not necessary, he can kiss him and feel the bitter taste of adrenaline and lust, and bend him and break him like this, with his hips and his dick.

Casey's not quiet now: every thrust gets a whimper or a moan, and they're in Zeke's place now, in private, so there's no need to smother the sounds. He's been doing Casey for weeks and he didn't know Casey was loud in bed.

He finds the rhythm suddenly, one that fits them both, and for a few seconds it's absolutely perfect. It's filling him with something hot and almost painful, something he can't really describe or define, but it's threatening to break out of him, and he pounds into Casey like his body thinks it can get it out that way. He doesn't realise he's cut off Casey's air until Casey scratches at his arms.

He loosens his grip and Casey grabs his hair and pulls him down and kisses him, surprises him with tongue and teeth and harsh hands. He feels the shudder through his body and especially in his dick, and slick heat between them, and Casey's limp and sweat-damp under him, and he pushes a few more times and comes. He's almost disappointed that it's over, and at the same time, he couldn't be more relieved. His legs are shivering.

He breathes into the crook of Casey's neck, smells sweat and sex and a faint whiff of soap and dust. Zeke licks the damp skin, neck and shoulder and collarbone, and tastes salt. Casey moves restlessly, but doesn't struggle.

"You're hurting me," he says after a while, though, not angrily. Zeke rolls off him and tucks him against his body. His back is chilly, but Casey's skin warms him and it's good enough. He's drifting, and thinks he should probably clean up. Pull a blanket over them. Drive Casey home.

*

He wakes up when Casey moves. He's only half out of a strange, uneasy dream when his arm shoots out and catches Casey's hand, pulls him back.

"It's almost five," Casey says. "I have to--"

"They don't know where you are."

"I have to go to the bathroom."

He follows Casey down the hall. Casey walks a little stiffly. They pass the big mirror and Zeke sees them both, naked and wrapped in shadows and faint light, and thinks there should be photographs. Some of the shadows on Casey are bruises, and Zeke thinks, _colour photos of him._

The bathroom is large and pristine, and Casey looks tiny and dirty in it. "You can take a shower," Zeke says. "Take a shower."

Casey meets his eyes quickly, but he doesn't protest. Zeke follows him now, too, turns on the water for him and fits them both under the spray. They're cold, and the water's hot, and stings his back and arms. Casey's skin is goosebumped and chilly.

Zeke touches Casey's hair and stops himself from telling him he can stay.


	4. Take

She's got Stan, good but stupid; he always gives her a glance before he kisses her, asks before he touches her breast. He makes love to her with quiet concentration.

He's perfect for her.

Zeke Tyler bounces into her in the hall. She elbows him and hisses, "Stay in the toilet with the rest of the druggies, why doncha?", and he gives her a look. Two looks.

"You know, you're not bad-looking when you're angry," he says. He's taller than Stan, even broader over the shoulders, too, but thin. He'd make a good football player if he spent some time on the field, she thinks.

"Sorry, I don't have time to chitchat," she says, "so if you'd excuse me."

He doesn't step aside. A small, infuriating smile flickers over his mouth. His eyes crinkle. "I'll call your agent and book an appointment then."

"You do that," she says, a little lamely, but what can you do. Zeke's hard to get off balance.

*

"I need to talk to you," Stan says as soon as he sees her, but she can't listen to him bitch about Coach Willis right now, she has things to do. Casey seems to have become even more invisible lately - if that's somehow possible - and she needed the shots of last year's Homecoming King and Queen (Stan and herself, of course) ready yesterday.

"Not now. Hey! Casey!" There he is, scuttling along the wall like a scared mouse, probably on his way to the science classroom. He stops in his tracks and turns slowly.

"It was kind of important," Stan says. She ignores him.

"Casey, the pictures?" He meets her eyes for a fracture of a second and then bows his head. She rolls her eyes, but he answers before she can think of something scathing to say.

"They're in the darkroom. I was just gonna--"

"I needed them yesterday, you moron."

He lifts his head with sudden defiance. "I was busy." It's gone, and he looks away again. "Sorry."

When he's gone with his tail between his legs, she sighs and turns back to Stan. "What was it you wanted?"

He rubs his face as if just looking at her makes him tired. That's a new thing, but it feels familiar somehow. Maybe he's been doing it and she hasn't paid attention. "I've been thinking--" he starts, but the bell interrupts him. "Okay, after class."

He doesn't try to kiss her, doesn't even reach for her hand. Apparently some big hissyfit coming up. She resists the urge to roll her eyes again.

*

The worst part is that it takes him so fucking long to spit it out. She has to listen to a longwinded and confusing speech about searching for a place in life and emotional compatibility and, quite possibly, sexual identity before it dawns on her that he's breaking up with her.

"--so, I just think we need to...ease up a little, and--" he mumbles.

"Stan," she says. He lifts his eyes and meets hers. He looks like shit. Must have been agonising over this for days. Jesus Christ. "Goodbye."

"What?"

"I'm easing up. Goodbye."

"But--"

"I'm busy."

He does leave, then, and when he practically runs out the door, she sees Casey in the hall outside. He probably heard everything.

It doesn't matter. Casey's the safest person in the world. People with no friends tell no secrets. "Hey," she says. He looks around, almost guiltily. "C'mere."

"I can't," he says quickly. He's already backing off. "I gotta go."

"Tell your shrink hi," she says and he glares at her with impotent frustration. She loves it when they can't think of a comeback. She smiles at him and he runs off.

Alone, she remembers that she's now boyfriend-less, and that is just not how it's supposed to be. Fucking Stan. She thinks about spreading some rumours. She thinks about hitting something, but her nails are perfect today.

She only has English class left and Miss Burke would never dare report her, so she walks down to her car and just leaves.

*

She hates all her clothes. This morning, she stood in her closet and loved them. The colour choices, the fabrics, the textures. Knowing that she looked good in them and that no one else in town has a pret-a-porter silk suit from Milan.

Now she looks at the rows of neatly hung shirts and skirts and tops and pants and thinks, they're not what I want.

Her mother is cooped up in her bedroom and no help at all. The house is slowly turning into a crypt - it'd be covered in filth if they didn't have Marisa, who comes twice a week and always shakes her head and clicks her tongue at the mess. She doesn't like Delilah: always a cold glare from the sharp, dark eyes.

Delilah cleans her own room, but the rest of the house isn't hers and she's not going to pick up after a grown woman like some sort of maid.

She only had Stan over on the days right after Marisa had cleaned. Now she wishes she'd never let him sleep in her bed. She takes down the photo she's dutifully kept on her dresser and puts it in a drawer in her bedside table.

*

She dresses in a white silk shirt and brown skirt. Camouflage colours. She takes off her earrings and the Dior necklace Stan gave her for her birthday and drops them in her drawer. "I'm going out," she says to the empty hall when she leaves.

*

Zeke's leaning against her car when she comes out of Claire's.

"I think I can live without your ass print on my hood," she says. He's smoking and not even looking at her.

"Shopping day?" he asks.

"Stalking day?" she snaps back and digs for her keys. There was something in his voice... He turns to her and meets her eyes, and she knows he knows. She freezes and he comes around the car; he moves quickly, and she wonders again why he never did any sports. Too busy peddling drugs and flipping off the system, probably.

He reaches for her and she can't help but flinch. He doesn't grab her, but instead snakes his hand into her coat pocket and fishes out the scarf and the earrings.

He holds them up. She snatches them back, and now he does grab her wrist. "So, is this a new hobby?"

"I bought them," she says, automatically, stupidly.

He smiles a slightly crooked smile and lets her go. Fishes a rumpled pack of Camels out of his jeans pocket. "Smoke?"

She glares at him. "My mother always told me not to accept things from junkies in the street," she says.

He holds up a hand. He's still smiling, unruffled. "Just being polite." He lights up and leans back against the car like he's got all day to stand here and annoy her.

He's fucking with her, he's so fucking with her. She entertains a little fantasy about digging her nails into his eye sockets. It was hot in Claire's, like they'd never heard about A/C. The dumpy girl at the register didn't even look at her when she walked out. Now the sun is beating down and her hair is sticking to the back of her neck.

She thinks, what is the dumbest thing I could possibly do today?

She waves her hand at the packet of smokes, and he raises an eyebrow but hands it over. She takes one and lights it. He drags on his, lets smoke run over his lips. He's standing too close. He's not making sense to her - his signals are twisted. If he's trying to pick her up, he's not sticking to the script, that's for sure.

She smokes and rubs her wrist. Zeke grabbed her pretty hard. Careless. Stan had a habit of stroking the skin on her chest - from her collar bone down between her breasts - with light fingertips, like she was made of something soft and tender, and he might leave marks. Worshipful. He got cranky if she bit his lip when they kissed.

She looks at Zeke's mouth. She's probably hallucinating already, but she imagines there's a little mark on it, like a fading bite mark. She imagines him biting his own lip. She imagines herself biting his lip.

The dumbest thing she could do. The very dumbest.

"You can buy me a cup of coffee," she says. He drops his cigarette and grinds it out.

"I'll do you one better - I'll make you coffee."

The very, very dumbest.

"Where's your car?"

*

He lets her bite his lip; he bites hers. When she lifts her arms, he pins them over her head. She bites his neck and he lets her go. She scratches his back.

She's left a mark on his neck, but there's another one there already - not entirely fresh. She runs her nail over it. "What's that?"

He touches it, smiles. "My mouse bit me."

"Yeah, right," she says, but he's bowing his head over her breast and the conversation is over.

*

"I'm gonna put on coffee," he says; he's got this post-sex nonchalance thing down pat. Stan was never good at that. He wanted to cuddle. Talk about his emotions. Delilah very rarely feels like talking about her emotions.

He gets up and pulls on a pair of jeans, and she lies back and watches his ass when he walks out. She's not exactly weak-kneed with awe, but pleasantly warm everywhere and her body feels used, but in a comfortable way. She expected to feel more...something - shame, maybe - about screwing someone like Zeke.

She slips out of bed and finds her skirt on the floor, her shirt thrown over a chair, her bra tangled in the sheet. Her panties are nowhere to be found, but she puts on the skirt anyway and goes exploring.

Zeke's house is bigger than she thought, almost as big as her mother's. The furniture is dated, but was probably top of the line when they bought it. She finds a bar cabinet with crystal carafes and rows of exquisitely wrought glasses. There's no booze there.

The master bedroom is wrapped in sheets, abandoned and untouched. Zeke's room was bare and Spartan; only the bed looked lived in, the bedsheets rumpled and soft with use.

The living room is a vast desert of tasteful beige and soft greens; no signs of life, and the remote control for the TV is dusty and forgotten on top of the speakers.

*

"Doesn't watch TV," she mutters to the CD shelf - The Beatles, The Doors, Sinatra, Goodman, Duke Ellington, Edith Piaf. Nothing recorded after 1970.

There's nothing interesting in the bathroom. Just a single toothbrush and a tube of Tom's of Maine toothpaste. The mirror cupboard is empty.

Does this guy even live here? Does anyone? She's almost convinced herself that he's really a homicidal squatter and she'll find the owners of the house stuffed in plastic bags in the next closet when she opens the basement door.

Here's the TV he uses, here's the stereo system with a CD tower and actual music actual people listen to; here's a big, ugly sofa and a coffee table covered with--

She looks and freezes.

"Fuck," she says, breathlessly, because this is the scoop, here's a secret you can fly high on. Photos, dozens of them; large, monochrome, tasteful matte. All of them of Zeke. She touches one gingerly: a close-up of his face twisted into an angry frown. They're good, but that's not what she's thinking about - even though there is something familiar about them, the way they're contrasted, the choice of angles. They're porn, most of them. Zeke standing in front of a mirror, gilded with light from an open door, naked and turned to the camera with a lazy smile on his face, his hand reached out and beckoning. Zeke lying on the bed she just left, his legs tangled in the sheet. Zeke looking into the camera, his hand curled around his cock.

She hears his footsteps on the stairs and jumps guiltily. The photos are lying on the fucking coffee table, though, and she's Delilah Profitt and she doesn't apologise.

"Quite a little vanity gallery you have here," she says when he's stopped in the door.

"They're not really mine," he says. He's still shirtless, carrying two cups of coffee.

"Yeah? But you posed for them." She runs her hand over the pictures and new ones show up. They're explicit, but too good to be really filthy.

"Everyone needs a hobby." He's grinning at her now, shameless.

"Yeah," she says, "like snowboarding or collecting stamps--"

"--shoplifting..." He hands her a cup. "That would be boring."

"Who took--" she starts, but he bends over her and sweeps the pictures aside, and she sees smaller ones under the pile, small colour ones, taken with a cheap compact camera, no doubt. A little blurry, some of them, sometimes overexposed.

"Oh my God." She _never_ says that; but she's staring at Casey Connor. Casey fucking Connor curled up naked on a bed - on Zeke's bed, she realises, the one she just fucked on - naked and hugging himself. There are livid bruises on his arms and he's looking down, turning his face away. She knows it's him, though. She sees him every fucking day.

"He's more comfortable behind the camera," Zeke says in her ear, too close for comfort. He's still leaning over her. There's a picture of Casey standing by the same mirror as Zeke in the first picture she saw, but he's pressed against the glass, his hands awkward by his sides, his shoulders hunched. He looks two breaths from falling to his knees and begging to be let out.

"How--" she says, but it's pretty obvious. Pretty fucking obvious.

"Those are mine," he says. "I'm not much of a talent with the camera, though. Maybe he'll give me some pointers one day."

"But--" She can't seem to finish a sentence. The one-syllable words are pretty much what's there right now. There's a flare of heat in her stomach. She can't stop looking. Casey's scrawny and still almost childlike. Zeke's sleek and graceful and cocky. There are a few shots of Zeke that aren't smut; laughing, drinking coffee, watching TV. The pictures of Casey are like internet porn; cheap and tawdry and humiliating. She runs her fingers over the slick surface of one - narrow shoulders, small hands, skinny ass.

Zeke's breathing on her neck. "Your mouse," she says slowly. The heat's growing into a furnace. He's pressing lightly against her, his crotch barely touching her ass. She stares at the pictures. Her hands are braced on the table now, she's bent over and hot, and Casey and Zeke stare up at her with misery and smug satisfaction.

"My mouse," he says and his hand slides over her leg, pushes up her skirt. Yeah, she thinks. Right, this is right. Naked Casey under her hand, smudged with her fingerprints. Zeke's hand between her legs and she pushes back and gasps. She bows her head; her hair flutters over the pictures, covering legs and arms and cocks; dividing the bodies into parts. Casey has scratches on his chest, and she leans closer to look. His mouth is swollen and his lip split. Casey's always looked wounded to her, but she's never thought it was hot. Not that it is. Zeke twists his fingers deliciously and she thinks she whimpers. It _is_ hot. She wants to press her hands against the bruises on Casey's arms.

When Zeke lines up and slides into her, she falls forward and leans her face against the photographs. They're cool against her flushed cheek, her blood-filled face.

The coffee cup, forgotten by her side, rattles and splashes scorching heat over her hand, all over the table. Zeke mutters something, but he doesn't stop.

*

He drives her back to her car. After he's gone, she sits behind the wheel for ten minutes, staring at the pictures she's spread out on the passenger seat. She forgot to look for her panties, and she's sticky and fucking up her skirt. She can't believe she fucked Zeke Tyler, but here she is and here are the pictures. She had them under her shirt when she left the house; snatched them off the table when he wasn't looking. She got good ones, too: Zeke naked, touching himself, staring into the camera. She likes the angle: it's taken slightly from below. She can imagine Casey kneeling to take it. Casey naked, curled up and turning away. That one is even harder to believe.

*

She wakes from a dream starring Casey hanging upside down from a tree and Zeke naked and wild and dancing in a dark room. She never dreams, and she likes it that way.

She spends two hours in the bathroom perfecting her hair and makeup and decides to never think about it again.

The first thing she sees when she turns into the school parking lot is Zeke's dust-black GTO parked in her usual spot.

"Fucker," she says and parks next to it, blocking the driver's side door.

*

She breaks her own resolution immediately after lunch, because she sees Casey in the hall, trying to look inconspicuous. He's got his camera around his neck, and Delilah feels a flash of heat zip through her. She can't be blushing, no way, but she's hot and there's a dull ache spreading between her legs.

She thinks about going to the art supply room and stabbing herself in the eye with a pencil. Or stabbing Casey. With a pair of scissors. Slapping him at least, hard enough to bang his stupid head against the wall. Give him a pretty black eye and a fat lip.

Oh, FUCK.

She busies herself in her locker, pretends to look for something - she could have _sworn_ she left her Estee Lauder lipliner in here - and curses her hot face and tightly twisting stomach.

She has the photo in her bag. Madness. It's stuck in a side compartment, next to the damn lipliner. She can't help seeing it.

She looks up and there's Zeke, throwing a casual glance in her direction. Casey's still where he was. People mill here and there, people say hi to her, ask her things.

There's a little bubble of peace around Zeke. No one bothers him. Casey has no bubble; he gets pushed and nudged, even though he's already pressed against the wall. She imagines their bags and careless fingers hitting his bruises and scratches. She imagines doing that herself, grabbing his upper arm and watching him wince.

Zeke's watching Casey. Casey's staring at the floor, but Delilah is pretty sure he's sneaking furtive glances. She's just not sure who he's looking at.

She turns away resolutely. She almost wishes she had Stan back so she could find him and rip him a new asshole as a distraction. He always forgave her for things like that. She only had to suggest PMS and he'd be meek as a lamb.

It's time to bow out of this mess. She _knows_ she's being played. She's just not entirely sure by whom.

*

Then Casey's in the darkroom after class, bent over some prints, and she can't stop herself. She studiously thought about other things during class, busied herself with her real life, her real problems and her real friends, rather than those losers she'd never have anything in common with.

She wouldn't have thought they'd have anything in common, either.

*

Casey doesn't notice her, and she stands in the door for a while. He's always been around. She remembers him from the first day of school, a tiny little kid who cried when his mom left him at the gate, and that was it for him. She's never found out a single interesting thing about him before. Clearly, she's not been looking in the right places.

"You know what I like?" she says before she's even really decided to say anything. He jumps and drops a couple rolls of film on the floor. They skitter and roll over the tiles and disappear under the desk.

When the clatter has died down, Casey's staring at her with a strangely level gaze; an expression she doesn't entirely like. There's a twist to his mouth that's almost contemptuous.

She must be projecting. This is _Casey_, for fuck's sake. Hidden depths, sure, but there's a limit to how much a person can hide.

"Bossing people around?" he ventures, and maybe she isn't projecting, after all. When did he grow a backbone?

The thought follows: what did Zeke do to him?

"You know me too well," she says and takes the two steps that separate them. Her heels click loudly on the floor, and he shuffles a step backwards and hits the wall. She leans in a little and now his expression is that familiar deer-in-headlights wide-eyed stare. "I like knowing things," she says, keeping her voice soft. "About people."

She leans closer. She can't hear him breathing, so he must have stopped. "I know something about you."

He smells different - she ignores the fact that she somehow knows what he usually smells like - different, yet familiar. Zeke, she thinks, he's wearing the same cologne. The thought gives her a zing of cold shivers that make her back tingle. She slips her hand in her purse and fishes out one of the photos. She can already tell the difference by touch alone: the one of Casey is printed on thinner, glossier paper, not the expensive and heavy matte paper of the monochrome shots.

She takes his hand - it's tiny and cold, almost a child's hand and that gives her another thrill - and puts the photograph in it.

"What is it?" he asks, a little out of breath.

"Look at it," she whispers. A smile's grown on her face and won't leave. It's probably not a very pleasant one. Casey looks down and Delilah waits.

He's completely still, so still it's like he's frozen from the inside. Then he starts shaking; she can see it start in his hands and travel up his arms and down his sides.

"Wh--" he says, swallows with a wince and tries again. "Where did you get this?"

She's never thought he was interesting before, never. It's a whole new world in here. It's almost as if he's suddenly become transparent and she can see some sort of alien life inside him. Things she didn't know about. She takes his hand again and the photo drops to the floor. "Does it matter?" she says. "I have it."

She puts his hand on her leg, pushes it up over her thighs. His fingers curl around the lower line of her panties, probably a reflex. He's breathing faster already, small hitched breaths. How long has he been following her around like an eager little puppy? How can he be her puppy and Zeke's mouse at the same time? She moves against his hand and he closes his eyes. His hand slides between her thighs and she knows he can feel that she's wet. She leans closer and whispers right in his ear, "Give my love to Zeke."

She's always known how to make the perfect exit.


	5. Run

Zeke's waited for fifteen minutes before he realises two things: he's waiting for Casey. Casey's not coming.

He's not sure which is more disturbing.

Someone says his name and he snaps around only to be grossly disappointed at the sight of some little yuppie fuck he can't even name. That's also disturbing.

"You got any--" the yuppie fuck says, and Zeke growls, "Fuck off," and gets in his car.

He fumbles for his smokes again while he coats the parking lot with rubber just to hear the squeal of tires. He likes that sound. Hell on the tires, though, but he can afford it.

*

This...thing he has with Casey - whereverthefuck Casey is - is hell on business, too. Tires and business. The car even seems sort of empty without him in it. Maybe that's what small, scared things do - they just insinuate themselves into a guy's life until he has to take care of them.

He notices that he's driving the wrong way. Maybe it's time to cut back some, cause he's heading for Casey's street here. He tosses the cig out the window and makes a U-turn.

At home he makes himself a pot of strong coffee and spends some time cleaning test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks and Petri dishes in the lab. After that, he contemplates giving Mr Tate a heart attack by doing his homework to present in class tomorrow. Decides against it, because it's starting to look like he might pass history this year.

It strikes him that Casey will pass history. Casey has excellent grades. Casey will go to college next year.

He finishes the coffee and takes a shower. Jerks off without really thinking about anything; he doesn't need to because his skin remembers Casey's skin.

He reads _Le Monde_ online just to make sure he'll be able to flunk French with grace again. He's got it under control. He finds himself wondering if Casey has his phone number.

*

Six o'clock is dinnertime in the Connor household, and Zeke drives through town, smokes and listens to old Alice Cooper tapes. He likes Casey's parents because they're easy to bullshit. They're crappy fucking parents, though.

"We thought he was with you," Mrs Connor says when he asks for Casey. "He hasn't been home, I think."

Casey's room is tidy and spotless, of course. It does look untouched, but Zeke's spent some time snooping around here, and there's one picture of Delilah missing, and the always-locked drawer is unlocked and empty. The supersecret porn stash is cleaned out.

Zeke hums _Runaway_ under his breath on his way down the stairs. "Right," he says with a smile. "I forgot - I told him he could come over straight after school, and I've been driving around town."

Mr Connor laughs. Zeke laughs with him and thinks, he's gone, you fuckers. You didn't even notice.

There's only one place Casey could run to at this point. "We're working on a project this weekend. Is it okay if Casey stays over?"

They tell him it's more than okay, and they look damned relieved to say that. He likes them less when he leaves.

*

He doesn't know where Casey is. It's been a while since he didn't know that. Casey's a creature of routines. He can be counted on to do exactly the same things in the same places at the same times every day unless something unforeseen happens.

Zeke likes to go with the flow, but he doesn't like it when Casey improvises. He sort of likes their routine. Casey waits for him after school, and they go to Zeke's place and eat and fuck, watch TV and fuck some more. Zeke drives Casey home. It's comfortable and handy.

It would be even more comfortable if Casey would move in. He's thought about it a few times, but there's never a good time to bring it up. Maybe Casey finally got the nudge he needed.

Zeke lights yet another cigarette and makes a note to himself to buy more. If Casey lived with him, he could fuck him in the morning, too. Maybe get a picture of him when he's asleep and not looking so fucking uneasy. Casey's the world's most stubbornly reluctant model. Zeke likes being photographed, but Casey looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin and disappear.

The one time Casey did fall asleep, on the sofa, lulled to sleep by Peter Jennings, Zeke just watched him until he woke up. Forgot to take pictures.

He drives slowly and looks for Casey along the way, but he gets back to his own house and no Casey anywhere. He drives back again, circles streets. It's started to rain a little, a cold, annoying drizzle. He closes the window.

Casey has a tendency to wander, though. More than once, Zeke's found him walking along the streets near his house, kicking at leaves and staring blankly at trees and birds, oblivious to the rest of the world.

*

Casey's standing at the Greyhound bus stop just before the freeway ramp. Zeke spots him from a block away. He's hunched up in the rain, hands in his pockets. An old brown duffel bag stands next to him.

Zeke pulls up to the bus stop. Casey doesn't move. He doesn't look entirely miserable, despite the rain running over his face. His hair is slicked against his skull. He's perfectly still.

Zeke lights a cigarette and opens the window. The wind's picking up and whips the rain into the car. Casey doesn't move.

"Casey," he says. His cigarette is getting wet, even though he's sitting inside the fucking car. Casey looks like a drowned kitten.

"Casey, get in the car." He's holding the wheel in a white-knuckled grip, and he loosens his fingers one by one. Jesus fucking Christ. "Casey."

This is a weird day. The sky's fucking falling, all of a sudden, and Casey just stands there like a small, wet mule. Zeke gets out of the car. It's like stepping into a shower. The rain's freezing cold, but he feels hot. He almost expects the water to steam off his skin.

Casey's standing only a few lousy feet away, almost in front of the car, but Zeke's already got cold water trickling down his back by the time he reaches him.

"Casey," he says. Still no reaction. He remembers when he was a little kid and his mother suspended his TV privileges for some reason or other, and he decided not to talk to his parents ever again. His mother yelled at him for twenty minutes straight.

He'd never thought he'd sympathise with her. His hands ache. He wants to grab Casey and throw him in the car.

Casey's turned his face away, and Zeke's hands don't just ache now, they throb with heat. A truck passes and drives through a puddle, drenching him utterly. That's it. His hands catch Casey by the arm and his mouth grinds out the words. "Get. In. The. Fucking. CAR."

He thinks he hears Casey mutter something, but that might just be the roar of traffic on the freeway. Then Casey picks up his duffel bag and drags it around the car and gets in. Zeke stands in the rain for a few seconds. He can feel his pulse beating in his throat and he's hot everywhere but in the pit of his stomach.

He chucks his damp cigarette and lights another one. Resists kicking the car before he gets in and drives.

*

Driving fast usually makes everything else seem insignificant, but it's not working now. Casey sits quietly next to him.

He doesn't even know where he's driving, but he ends up on the dirt road down to the lake, hitting potholes and puddles and sliding in the mud. The lake comes up suddenly, around a turn and he hits the brakes.

This isn't the popular road, the one that goes to the beach. This ends in a gravel flat that resembles a beach if it's dark and you're very myopic. Some brown, listless bushes tremble in the wind along the road. The water is slate grey and mottled with raindrops.

He turns to Casey, who's staring intently out the window at the flat, grey world. His duffel bag is at his feet, and Zeke yanks it up. It's damp and smells like wet fur.

He pokes through it. Clothes, clothes, clothes, Casey's zip drive, a toothbrush, a folder with photographs. The camera. A passport.

Casey looks about five in the picture. The date of issue is in 1995, and his hair was long and floppy and his face a little softer than it is now. There's only one stamp in the passport, for Mexico.

Guess he was really leaving, Zeke thinks, but the thought doesn't sound like something he's feeling. He can't tell what he's feeling. Casey hasn't moved at all.

"Where were you going?" Zeke asks. He hasn't ripped the passport to pieces, even though he thinks it might feel pretty good to do that.

"Anywhere but here, you fucker," Casey says flatly. Adds, "Canada," almost as an afterthought.

Zeke very rarely loses it. He doesn't even notice that he has before his knuckles already smart and Casey's head has made a dull noise when it hit the window.

Casey holds his hand over his nose, but he doesn't cry out. He's finally looking at Zeke, though. There's blood on his fingers. His face is pale, with a sharp flush crowning his cheekbones, almost like make-up. Zeke wipes rainwater from his eyes. He's forgotten his cigarette and it's burned down to the filter. He drops it in the ashtray.

"You wanna go?" he asks. "You wanna fucking go?"

"Delilah sends her love," Casey says and fumbles for the doorhandle. Zeke catches him, slaps him in the face, falls over him in the seat. The car's too cramped for a fight and Casey's slippery and twisting in his grip, and somehow he gets the door open. They both fall out, hit the ground and the rain hits them and surrounds them. Wet gravel under them. Zeke is holding on to Casey's belt, Casey's coat, and Casey's squirming and kicking, and all the time screaming something unintelligible and garbled.

Zeke doesn't do regret, but he thinks he might be regretting the thing with Delilah. Casey arches and kicks out and smacks him in the jaw with a knee, tears loose and scrambles to his feet. He's lost his coat and his shirt is torn. He runs.

Zeke gets to his feet. He catches Casey down by the water. The gravel is slippery and wet and Casey falls badly, on his face. He doesn't stop struggling and he screams, shrill, inarticulate yells. Zeke manages to turn him over, get his face away from the sharp rocks. He kicks and squirms and his shirt's ripping at the seams and his skin is cold under Zeke's fingers.

In the end, Zeke just holds him down with his body, regrets crushing him against the ground. He doesn't see a choice, though. Casey's wild-eyed and mad, spits in his face when gets a chance and always aims for the groin and the eyes, sharp fingers and knees in soft spots.

When he finally stills, like a cat will still when it realises it can't escape; watchful quiet, ready to explode into action when the hands holding it relax, Zeke murmurs soft words at him and touches his bloody face. "It's okay," he says, even though he doesn't know if that's true. "You'll be okay, you don't have to leave."

Casey lies still and stares past him, blindly into the rain. Zeke strokes his throat and neck, his stomach and arms. Casey doesn't move.

Zeke kisses his face and tastes blood and water.

*

Casey can walk, but he sways drunkenly and Zeke has a tight grip on his arm. The drive home is quiet, and Zeke worries, for the first time, that he might have crossed some line. It's not something he usually worries about. Casey makes no attempt to clean up.

*

He knows the water is warm, but he can't feel it. He might as well be sitting in a tub full of ice. Zeke's gone, but Casey can still feel his hand on his back, a whisper of warmth along his spine.

His ruined clothes lie in a soggy heap on the floor. His shirt is in tatters; the sharp gravel chewed right through it when he struggled, right through the shirt and his skin.

Even the cuts are cold. He wanted to go to Canada. He would have been cold there, too. Would have, would have, would have.

He can't figure this out. He has no idea what Zeke wants. His face hurts; his jaw clicks when he moves it and he thinks maybe there's a loose tooth somewhere. His fingers are soft and wrinkled.

He finds a sudden burst of energy and crawls out of the tub and almost runs to the door, slips on the floor and falls against the knob. It doesn't even hurt. He locks the door and leans against it.

He's warming up now that he's out of the water, so maybe it was going cold around him. He didn't even notice.

Zeke helped him out of his clothes, carefully, gently. Whispered soft things. Casey couldn't resist, couldn't comply, either. He wonders where his bag is. The photos are in the bag - Delilah and Zeke, and that horrible picture Delilah gave him. He can't figure Zeke out.

He looks like shit. The mirror is a little steamed over, and he's almost afraid to wipe it. He does, anyway. Looks. Thinks he should cry. He looks like he should cry. It occurs to him that maybe this is his real face. Maybe he was made to be banged against windows. It hardly registers as pain.

He doesn't cry. There are no razors in the cabinet. He thinks about punching the mirror until it breaks. He could get back in the tub and bang his head against the side until he passes out and drowns. He could twist his clothes into a rope and hang himself from the shower rod.

He rubs his face and winces. He already forgot that it's broken. He can't cry. Zeke came for him. He wants to destroy the photo Delilah gave him. He remembers the damp heat between her legs. Maybe he could burn it. He doesn't know where Zeke put his bag.

He stands there and stares at his swollen lip and his red-rimmed eyes and the scratches on his cheek. He breathes slowly and the glass mists over again. He uses Zeke's toothbrush and brushes his teeth and spits blood into the sink. He doesn't rinse the red spatter from the porcelain.

Then he wraps himself in a towel and unlocks the door. There's no sign of Zeke anywhere. Casey can't remember how long he sat in the bath after Zeke stopped cleaning his face and backed out of the room.

The door to upstairs is locked from the outside. There's a sandwich and a glass of milk on the coffee table, a couple of blankets on the couch. Casey's clothes are spread over chairs and shelves to dry out.

He sits down. There are no dry clothes to be had. The blankets are the ones from Zeke's bed, he sees. If he pressed his face into them, he'd smell Zeke. He wraps himself carefully, makes sure no bare skin stays uncovered. The TV isn't on, but he doesn't feel like watching, anyway. He's hungry. The sight of the sandwich makes him feel sick.

The blanket warms him and he gets sleepy. He realises he does smell Zeke, and he's in the sofa where they sit and watch TV and doze after sex, and sometimes they sort of slide together and Casey leans his head against Zeke's shoulder. Sometimes Zeke pets his head distractedly. Sometimes they have sex on the couch, Casey pinned down and Zeke pushing into him.

He notices he's curled up and pressed his nose into the blanket after all. It's getting hard to keep his eyes open, but he thinks angry thoughts about the locked door, about Delilah, about the stupid photo, and about fucking Zeke and his fucking house and his fucking car and his fucking hands that can't decide whether to hurt or soothe.

His eyes hurt, and when he rubs them carefully, his fingertips come away damp.

*

She wouldn't have noticed, but she's sitting by the window. Her mother is out somewhere, probably indulging in some less-than-socially acceptable behaviour downtown. Delilah sits by the window. She's not really waiting for her mother. More like enjoying the silence, actually.

So she sees the car.

After ten minutes, she goes out. The world is glistening and fresh after the rain. She has to zigzag between puddles in the drive.

Zeke's in the driver's seat, drumming his fingers on the wheel and smoking.

"You _are_ stalking me," she says. The street light is painting him in cold white and sharp shadows. He looks hollow-eyed and emaciated, even though she knows he's not.

"Yeah," he says. "You talked to Casey."

Ohhh. Drama. She's been sort of bored all evening, the rain, the rain, her mother yelling, the rain. The silent house after her mother left.

"You didn't think I would?" she says.

"I don't know, I don't know," he says, not playing along at all. He rubs his face. "Look."

"Go home, Zeke," she says and turns around.

"No," he says and she turns back.

"Are you high?"

He rolls his head on his shoulders. "You need to come with me."

There's a full moon she can blame. Instead of saying, "You ARE high, fucker," she just gets in the car.

They're almost at Zeke's house when she notices a smear on the passenger side window. She squints at it.

"Is that blood?"

"Yeah," he says. The night is star bright, nothing left of the clouds, and the sky sucks up the city lights instead of reflecting them back in dirty orange like it's been doing for days.

It would never have occurred to her to be afraid of Zeke before.

"Wait," she says. Fuck. Her brain's putting two and two together now. "Where's Casey?"

"Locked in the basement," he says. He pulls into his drive and gets out. She stares at the smear. It's drying, but it's not very old. Earlier today. She tries to picture it. Blood from a cut. A broken nose. She thinks of car crashes, metal and glass and soft, mangled flesh. She watched _Crash_ once with Stan, and he was horrified. She wasn't, but she didn't tell him that.

*

She opens the door and yells after him, "What do I have to do with this? Hey, you moron! I'm not going in there until you spill."

He stops and runs his hand through his hair. His shirt is wet. His pants are wet. There are streaks of mud here and there.

"You didn't. Zeke, what the fuck?"

"I'll drive you back," he says, and she gets out of the car.

"Oh, no way. What did you do?"

"You talked to him, okay. Do the math."

She's not the comforting type. Zeke looks miserable, and he's not the type for that, either. Her curiosity is piqued, and she walks past him, ignoring the puddles this time. This is all very creepy in that horror movie way - she's almost expecting to find Casey dead. Should probably check Zeke for weapons.

"Let me in," she says and he does. Just in case, she stays behind him.

*

Zeke unlocks the basement door and she can't help but say, "You weren't kidding, were you?"

"Nope," he says.

All the lights are on in the basement room. There's a sandwich and a glass of milk on the table. Casey's just a tuft of hair sticking out of a bundle of blankets on the sofa. He doesn't move.

"Well, either he's asleep or dead. What do you expect me to do?"

"I don't think he's dead," Zeke says, a little too quickly. "I didn't hit him that hard."

"Hey, Casey," she says. "Casey!" He still doesn't move, so she walks closer and crouches by the sofa. "Casey, baby, hot sex! Naked women! Wakey. Naked _men_."

Zeke snorts behind her. She turns quickly and he's not laughing. He looks vaguely scandalised, in fact. She ignores him and touches Casey's shoulder lightly, pulls down the blanket.

He makes a small sound and moves, and she sees his face.

Her own face hurts, and she realises she's left her mouth open. She closes it. She stares. _Crash_ comes to mind again, and she wonders if he'll scar, if anything's broken. She thought, when she watched the movie, that it was hot but so far removed from her. It left her shaken but unsatisfied. Jarred.

"Casey," she whispers. "Casey." She touches his face. There's a cut on his cheekbone, a deep scratch that's bled a little after he cleaned his face. The dried blood crumbles under her fingers.

Casey blinks and whimpers and moves again. His eyelids flutter, and she sees that one is swelling shut. His lip is split and there's a bruise along his jaw.

"You really fucked him up," she says, keeping her voice low now. She slides her fingertips over the swelling around Casey's eye, and his eyelids flutter again. He sighs and turns his face to her.

Opens his eyes. It takes a little while for them to focus. His voice is hoarse. "Delilah?" He moves his hands under the blanket, looks past her. "Where's--"

He doesn't look scared, she notes. Anxious, maybe. Then he turns off - she can see it happen. He just crawls back inside himself somehow and is still. She thinks again about scars. Her hand lies on his cheekbone, over the scratch.

Zeke shuffles around somewhere in the room. He's stopped being interesting. Casey lies silent and she leans closer. She thinks she can smell blood on him. It looks strange - the blood and the bruises. Make-up, a movie still.

She pushes against the puffy, purple skin and he cries out and screws his face up. It doesn't look like a movie still, then.

"Sorry," she says, and means it. She doesn't take her hand away, though. He's very pale. She wonders if he's in shock. She can't remember what to do with people in medical shock. "Are you feeling sick?"

"No," he says and she can't resist the way his lips move. She leans in and puts her mouth over his, just lightly, to feel the heat of the wound and the bruise. He doesn't move.

She opens her mouth and tastes metal and salt, and her stomach does a quick flip, and she's suddenly light-headed. She licks his mouth and he makes a sound again, so soft she can't really hear it, but she feels it. Her palms prickle with anticipation.

She hears Zeke again, close behind her. She puts her tingling palm on Casey's throat and slides it down, pushing the blanket away. He's not wearing a shirt. Her finger finds spots of heat along his ribs, more scratches. He's still not moving, but it feels like he's fighting to keep still now. She touches his lips with her tongue again and he opens his mouth a little, almost reluctantly.

He's not wearing any pants, either. Or underwear. He freezes up under her hands, holds his breath. Zeke's right behind her, she can feel him there, like a movement in the air. The hairs on the back of her neck try to stand up.

*

She lifts her head. Casey's looking past her. She follows his gaze. Zeke's face is neutral, but she can see a little twitch in his jaw. She doesn't know if he's angry or afraid or about to burst into laughter. She thinks Casey doesn't know, either.

There's a shallow scrape on the side of Casey's chest, running over the bumps of ribs in a slanted line towards his sternum. It looks like someone rubbed him with sandpaper. Or dragged him over the ground. He's probably had scrapes like that before.

His skin is very smooth, baby soft where it's not scratched. Her hands like it. Her mouth likes his mouth. She wonders, distractedly, if this is what makes a pervert, this want - she can't stop. It doesn't matter, because he's not shying back, he's not trying to get away. He's breathing again, soft puffs against her wet mouth. His chest moves under her palm. His stomach is concave.

She pushes down the blanket, wants all of him at once. He's narrow and skinny; she always slept with jocks before, jocks and Zeke, of course - tall guys, broad-shouldered guys. Casey is smaller than her.

She kisses him then, for real, and his mouth opens and lets her in, and his teeth are small and sharp and his tongue is hot. Her skin is hot, too, hot under scratchy cotton, and she wants to take her clothes off. She thinks about Zeke and the photos.

She fumbles with buttons, opens her blouse. She's not wearing a bra. She leans closer, kisses him harder, and he whimpers. It must hurt, she thinks. It must hurt him to kiss her with his split lip and the bruise. He doesn't pull back, just moans softly and moves his lips as if he's speaking into her mouth. She presses against him, her breasts against his skinny chest. Her nipples ache.

She almost wants to ask him for permission, but she doesn't know what she'd say. She's never-- Boys always come to her. Casey's breathing fast, but he's not doing anything. She slides her hand down his chest, his stomach. Zeke's so close now that she can feel his heat against her back.

Casey yells when she touches his cock, yells something muffled into her mouth and moves sharply. Startling in the quiet room, but he's hard, and she doesn't back off. Then Zeke pushes at her suddenly, nudges her away, grabs Casey's hand and holds it.

*

That gives her pause. Zeke's hand around Casey's, Casey's face. Zeke's face. Oh, fuck, she thinks. Casey's face. Battered wife, maybe, the bruises and the longing - she doesn't know what's wrong with this picture but something is. Then he arches his back and pushes into her hand, and it doesn't matter.

She pushes the blanket off the couch entirely and leans back in to kiss him. Her legs are trembling and she's filled with something hot and liquid and heavy.

Then Zeke's hand pushes up her thigh, under her skirt. Yanks at her panties and she gets it, she gets it. Moves upward and he slides the panties off. The sofa is big and broad. Big enough for this. She wonders if Zeke's fucked Casey on it. Knows he must have.

Casey's tiny and the bruises look almost fluorescent against his skin, and she has that second of hesitation where she looks at him, down at him and thinks, _this is nuts_.

Then he squirms and opens his mouth a little, and his eyes are glazed and heavy-lidded, and there's no question. No question at all. It's easy and natural to straddle him, sink into the pillow, and sink onto him. She sees him squeeze Zeke's hand and her stomach flutters, and she has to count to ten to make herself move slowly.

He's biting his lip, his bloody lip, bucking against her like his body isn't bruised all over, like he's in the shape of his life. He doesn't close his eyes, but stares intently at her, then Zeke, then back to Delilah again. She likes the zing of cold down her spine and she finds his free hand and tugs at it, makes him touch her. His fingers ghost over her breast and she thinks he cries out again, but it might have been her. Maybe both of them. Zeke's bent over Casey and his shoulders are tense, like he's the one hurting.

*

She touches his neck quickly, moves in a slow, comfortable roll and she knows she must be flushed all over, getting damp along her back, between her breasts. She has Casey's hand in a death grip, pressed against them, she's rubbing her nipples against the heel of his palm.

Zeke bows his head over Casey and she doesn't see, but she hears Casey's moan cut off and they're kissing, and Casey goes rigid for a second. Then he pushes up, almost violently, bangs against her and his hand tightens around her fingers, grinds them together.

Zeke's hand under her skirt, suddenly, pressing at the small of her back and she arches and drives herself down and Casey makes a strangled, panicky noise, shudders and stills. His eyes flutter closed.

She's panting and sweaty and it's not enough yet, not nearly, but he's so small and now she sees how tired he is, hollow-eyed where he's not black-eyed.

She must have made a noise now because Zeke looks up at her. He's flushed, too, and breathing heavily, and he moves quickly - she remembers this; that he's fast and strong - and pulls at her, pulls her off Casey and up, and his hand comes up between her thighs. He has strong fingers, strong sure fingers. She remembers this, too, and she grinds against him and fills with it, radiation.

She could swear he grins, just briefly. Casey's blinking sleepily at them, limp and warm under them. Zeke lets her go and she falls back, sits next to Casey's legs.

Casey stirs, mumbles something. Delilah doesn't hear it, but Zeke does, and she thinks it might have been his name. He touches Casey's lips and Casey opens his mouth and sucks on his fingers. Delilah knows the taste, the smell is all around. There's a low ache between her legs.

Zeke's moved closer again, he's unbuckling his pants and Casey's reaching for him. Delilah's not surprised, somehow. She lies down next to Casey, squeezes in between him and the back of the sofa, and Zeke moves up and pushes Casey's legs apart.

She almost wants to protest, wait, wait, he can't-- you can't-- he's _hurt_, but Casey's pulling Zeke up almost eagerly, lifting his hips without wincing. Delilah kisses his neck and touches his shoulder and watches. She feels it in Casey's body, his intake of breath, a sudden tension and then movement, very slow - Zeke is taking care, letting Casey set the pace. Delilah kisses Casey again, tastes salt on his lips.

It would be possible to fall asleep like this, she thinks. Caught between Casey and the sofa, lulled to sleep by their movements and the drowsy warmth in her body. She fits in here with Casey's breath on her face and Zeke's legs rubbing against hers.

She wonders if her mother got home at all. Finds the answer doesn't really interest her. She's sticky everywhere, and the sweat is cooling her skin now. She might still never get off this couch.

Zeke says Casey's name when he comes. She smiles at that.

*

She almost does fall asleep, but Zeke shakes her and says, "Come on, I'll drive you back."

She gets up. Casey's wrapped in the blanket again, yawning, and Zeke's buckling his belt.

She gets dressed. Her legs are a little weak still, and she has some of the pleasant well-laid feeling left. She kisses Casey's cheek goodbye. He doesn't smile, but his eyes are calm. Almost serene. She doesn't know if she's ever seen Casey look serene before. Probably not.

Zeke kisses him, too, on the mouth.

In the car, Delilah says, "He needs something for those cuts."

"I have Neosporin and junk. Iodine," Zeke says, but when they get to her house, she tells him to hang on and runs up and cleans out her mother's medicine cabinet. The house is dark and empty. There's no way she's going out looking for the woman. She thinks, if it was Casey, I might go looking, and feels stupid and warm.

They share a cigarette, leaning against Zeke's car. Then he gets in and throws the medicine baggie on the passenger seat. "Seeya tomorrow," he says.

She goes back inside to take a shower.


	6. Stay

Casey wakes up. It's dark still, and the clock by the bed blinks 4.30 at him. His face hurts. He's kicked off the blanket. The room looks wrong and his hand is asleep, numb as a log and caught somewhere, cuffed to the bed or something. He tugs at it and the cuff is Zeke's hand, wrapped tight and ungiving around his wrist.

He's not at home. He wonders if his parents have noticed he's gone. He could be on a Greyhound now, curled up against the window, watching dark highways roll by. Instead, he's caught in Zeke's bed and watches faint streetlight colour the curtains orange.

He pulls at the blanket, tries to cover himself again. He's naked. He never sleeps naked. Zeke moves and grips his wrist tighter. Casey can't get the blanket back - Zeke's wrapped in it. Of course he'd be a blanket hog.

*

And Casey's face hurts. It feels swollen and hot, too, and he can only imagine what it looks like. There's no way he could go to school without having to answer questions. Someone would call his parents. Someone would make him go to the nurse and she'd look at him and maybe, maybe figure something out.

Casey could have Zeke arrested. Maybe.

Zeke moves again, restlessly, as if he can read Casey's mind in his sleep. He finally lets go of Casey's wrist and Casey moves away, curls up around himself and tries to massage life back into his hand. He's getting cold. He doesn't think he can go back to sleep.

He tries to be quiet when he leaves the bed, but of course he walks into a chair, the door, stumbles on the threshold. Every sound, even the light padding of his bare feet on the carpet, seems to grow in the quiet house. His heart beats in his chest like a bass drum and he can almost hear it echoing off the walls. His breaths are rushes of air through narrow pipes, whistling and whooshing.

*

Zeke doesn't wake, and Casey tiptoes through the dark house, down to the basement, finding his way by touch, his hands trailing the walls until he's downstairs and finds a light switch.

His spare clothes are dry now, still hanging over furniture. He pulls on a pair of jeans. They're a little too big - all his clothes are just a little too big because his mother seems to think he'll grow faster if she buys them oversized, like his body will have no choice but to stretch and fill them. He finds his things stuffed haphazardly back in the bag. His camera. He can't find his passport, but he didn't think he would. He packs everything neatly in the bag and leaves it by the table.

He sits on the sofa. He's tired, in that way that pulls his head down towards his chest and makes his hands shake when he lifts them. Finally, he just lies down. Tired, but not sleepy.

So, he lost his virginity here. Not technically, but somehow, sex with Zeke doesn't really count. Sex with Zeke is something else, not-sex. Denial, denial, he thinks. Hell yeah. But some sort of cherry was lost when he was spread on his back, dizzy and confused and Delilah just crawled on top of him.

He can smell her perfume on the sofa. She lay here, pressed against him in nothing but her hitched-up skirt. And Zeke was there, and Casey can't think too long about any of it.

He turns around and presses his face into the worn, scratchy fabric. Smells dust and that faint, flowery scent that's never been there before, and sex. He can still smell that.

The skin on his back and shoulders crawls and shudders into goosebumps, and the memory is one of those tremblingly vivid ones - _Delilah's mouth on his cheek, her tongue lapping in small strokes over the cut_ \- that merge with the present - his hips even do a little proto-thrust, a twitch, into the back of the couch - and drench him in heat - _Zeke's fingers, the taste of them, sticky, tangy, bitter_ \- make him gasp.

He sits up quickly and his head spins. He leans forward and blood rushes back into his face, making the bruises throb dully, the cuts sting. He remembers that, too, fist-window-pain, falling on his face in the gravel and the panic pulling dark curtains over everything. Zeke's hard hands pushing him down.

*

He's still hot, though.

_Sicko_, he thinks, but it doesn't have the impact of revelation. He's known that for a while, then. Another thing to set him apart.

His bag sits next to the table. His money is still there, a hundred and forty-three dollars in small bills and change. The world is outside, silent and waiting. His eyes sting a little and he rubs them. It just makes it worse, because he forgot about the black eye, and now tears spring up just from surprise at the pain. He blinks them away. It's probably cold outside.

He doesn't bump into anything on his way back to Zeke's room. He stops in the door, because Zeke's turned over and his face is painted in faint light and smudged shadows. Casey waits for some sort of invitation, a feeling of welcome, belonging, safety. It doesn't come, of course. He never even felt it in his own room.

It is kind of a letdown, though. He wanted the night to give him a heads up. Good choice, bad choice, stop fucking around. An acknowledgement that he is choosing.

He sits down on the bed and it's the decision.

"Are you gonna lie down or just sit there all night?" Zeke says behind him and Casey's heart skips a beat - he can feel it stutter in his chest.

He doesn't turn around, but there's movement and Zeke's hand comes to rest on his hip, right on the waistband of his jeans. His fingers sneak over it, whisper over skin and Casey shivers. Goosebumps again, and that familiar surge; one touch and he's gone.

Zeke slides his hand around his waist, pulls him backward. Breath on his neck and the hair there stands straight up and his scalp prickles, tiny needle stings.

"Take off the jeans," Zeke whispers into his hair and there are more prickles and Casey's hands go to his jeans button before he even has time to understand the command.

He doesn't wait, though - once he's pushed down his jeans and left them in a pile on the floor, he lies down on the bed, face down. He doesn't want to see, he thinks. The light would make Zeke alien and beautiful, something Casey would want to photograph, maybe. He wants to do more with his camera, go deeper into details that grow significant when you focus intently on them, play with light and shadow. Zeke's a strangely patient model when he's in the mood; lets Casey arrange his limbs, poses with an easy comfort that Casey doesn't understand at all. He doesn't understand it, but he's grateful for it when he looks at it through the lens.

The first picture was more an accident than anything else: Zeke stood in the doorway and the light from the hall cut over his face and turned it into a half-mask with slanted cat-eyes and Casey lifted his camera from the table and took a picture. That was a Thursday, he remembers, but he can't say which Thursday it was. The weeks have bled together. A month ago, two. Zeke didn't beat the shit out of him. Zeke told him to take more pictures. He's taken so many now that he should have lost count, but he can picture every one of them if he concentrates.

Zeke doesn't move for a while, and Casey wonders if he misunderstood entirely. Maybe Zeke objects to jeans worn in bed. Zeke hardly ever does anything the same way twice.

Then Zeke's breath feathers over his back, Zeke's lips follow, and Casey presses his face into the pillow and doesn't care that his bruises ache.

"Delilah," Zeke says, and Casey opens his eyes. He didn't even realise he'd closed them. Zeke's hand strokes his hair. "Do you think about her?"

Casey has no idea what's expected now. "Sometimes," he suggests. Zeke's fingers are still gentle, but they can turn vicious in a second.

"I got her for you. Never fucked a girl before, never fucked _her_, have you?" Mouth again, tongue and hot breath cooling the dampness. "You looked a little out of it."

*

_Thanks to you, yeah_, Casey thinks, but he says, "I was."

"How did it feel?" Zeke's going lower now, his tongue on the small of Casey's back.

Casey shivers and says, his voice not completely steady, "Good."

"Everything you wanted?" Zeke asks, but he's dipped down to the crease of Casey's thigh now and Casey has no answer. "I like your skin," Zeke says. "Good skin. You bruise easily."

Zeke doesn't always talk during sex. Sometimes he's just quiet and his face is dark and he twists Casey's arms and forces him to his knees. Sometimes he mutters obscenities. Sometimes he talks about something else. Science, maybe. "I had this idea," he might say, "but I'll have to get some mice. Changing the formula of the dust. Make the rush faster. Stupid fucking kids. Have to steal some mice. You ever shoplift, Casey?"

Now he's saying, as he comes back up and covers Casey's shivering back with his body, "How about bondage? Handcuffs, ropes, chains..."

"I'm already tied up," Casey mumbles into the pillow, but he doesn't think Zeke hears him, but he grabs Casey's wrists and holds them while he fucks him.

*

Afterwards, Zeke turns him around and touches his face softly. His expression is thoughtful, and Casey almost expects him to say he's sorry. He doesn't. Silly me, Casey thinks. He won't be sorry until I'm dead.

It doesn't feel so bad to think that. Zeke pulls him close and falls asleep, his breath tickling Casey's neck.

*

On Saturday, Casey calls his parents. Zeke leans against the wall on the other side of the room while Casey talks and twists the cable around his fingers.

"Hi," Casey says, "it's me. No, Casey."

"I'm just--" he says. Zeke wants a cigarette at that point already, but he never smokes in the house, only down in the basement. The one thing he listened to his parents about. "Yeah. I'll be-- Yeah, we're working on--"

"Mom," Casey says. His face is pale, except the bruises and a hectic flush on his cheeks. "I-- Oh. Okay."

"Love to Dad," Casey says and hangs up. He has the cable twined tightly around his hand, and he untangles it slowly. "They were watching the game," he says. Zeke pushes away from the wall and walks up to him, pulls him away from the phone. Slides his hands under his shirt, strokes his stomach.

"Fuck 'em," he says and pulls the shirt over Casey's head.

*

Delilah comes by later, before Zeke has even decided whether to call her or not. Casey's snoozing in front of the TV and Zeke's trying out a new way of cutting the caffeine pills for smaller expense and greater income.

"You guys have never heard of the outdoors, have you?" she says when he lets her in.

"Nah," Casey says drowsily and turns over.

"I enjoy the comfort of my basement," Zeke says. Delilah sits on the couch next to Casey and bums Zeke's cigarettes. Tries to get Casey to smoke one, and when he does, and coughs, she laughs at him and kisses him.

Zeke puts on one of his mother's precious but abandoned Edith Piaf records. Casey knows all the words to _Sous de ciel de Paris_ but doesn't understand them.

*

_Born On The 4th of July_ is on at ten, and they watch it. "He should get a haircut," Delilah says. "He'd feel much better."

"He can't walk," Casey says. "I don't think hair's gonna change it."

"You'd say that. That thing on your head's growing into a mullet and you haven't even noticed."

Casey doesn't answer, because he's fallen asleep again. "He sleeps a lot," Delilah says. Zeke shrugs.

"Kept waking up all night. High strung."

Delilah lights another cigarette - buy cigs, Zeke tells himself, and make her pony up for them - and watches Casey for a while. Tom Cruise rants in the background.

She looks a little puzzled, staring at Casey. Like she can't quite figure out why he's there. Or why she's there. Sometimes Zeke has thoughts like that, but then it's just too obvious to think much about. Casey has curled up around himself like a cat, his knees pulled against his chest.

Delilah pulls a hand through her hair and tugs down Casey's shirt where it's ridden up over his side.

"He's kinda--" she says, looks up and meets Zeke's eyes.

"Yeah," he says and they both look away.

*

On Monday, Zeke gets Delilah to come by his place before school and fix up Casey's face. "Just so he doesn't look like--"

"You beat the crap outta him?" That's what Casey's been thinking too, Zeke's pretty sure, but Casey doesn't say shit like that out loud. Zeke sees him bite back retorts every day. He wonders when Casey will stop stopping himself.

"Just make it look natural."

Casey's grumpy but goes along. He'll always go along without trouble if he possibly can. Delilah squints into his face and smooths foundation over the green-purple bruises. "Don't let them stick your head in a toilet or anything, though," she says.

Casey twists his mouth and says, "No, I'll remember to ask them to not mess up my make-up," and Delilah laughs. There's sun in the kitchen, the smell of coffee and Casey's smiling. Zeke blinks a couple of times in the bright light.

*

Zeke drives Casey to school. They're fashionably late and it's making Casey jittery.

"What, never been late before?"

"No," Casey says and legs it to class without looking back. Zeke smokes a few before he follows.

*

"I have to go home," Casey says when Zeke finds him hanging around the bus stop after school. "It's a weekday and. It's a weekday."

"You still look like shit. You can't be powdering your nose on your own."

"I can say. I don't know." He tugs at his shoulder strap and looks past Zeke.

"Call them from my place," Zeke says and Casey follows him to his car.

*

He wakes up sometimes in the night, because he can't move. Casey's wrapped himself around him like a limpet, his hands almost locked behind Zeke's back. Zeke lies still and feels Casey's breath on his face for a while before he pulls away. Casey sighs but doesn't wake up.

In the morning, Zeke finds him in the basement, watching MTV.

"Couldn't sleep," he says.

*

On Tuesday, he sees Casey up on the bleachers during lunch, and watches him for a while. Casey chews on an apple and does homework. Casey stares blankly at the empty field. Casey leans his head in his hands. Zeke looks around for any unwanted audience and finds none.

"The jocks will kick your bony ass if they catch you here," he says when he's close enough. Casey jumps and drops his apple.

"Don't sneak up on me," he says, finds his apple again. It's dirty, and he throws it down on the field. He doesn't have a bad arm. "They never come here at lunch."

They sit there for a while. The sun feels pale and distant, and the air is chilly. Zeke hums under his breath, looks for a tune. Casey hums along, but he has absolutely no voice.

Zeke puts his hand on Casey's thigh because he can. He thinks about sucking dick. He's not averse to the idea, but it's never really occurred to him before. Casey doesn't seem to mind it, and Casey never asks for anything in bed, ever.

Casey moves a little and Zeke thinks he wants to say "don't", but stops himself.

"You can say no, you know," Zeke says.

"Ha ha ha," Casey says and looks down at the field again. Zeke wonders if he takes comfort in having no choice. Far be it from Zeke to deprive him of comfort.

*

Wednesday night, 3 am, the phone rings. Zeke knows Casey often wakes up at night and skulks around the house in the dark, but of course he doesn't wake up now. Zeke fumbles for the phone and almost drops it on Casey's head.

"Someone better be dead," he says.

It's Delilah. "Is Casey there?"

"Where else would he be?"

"Put him on."

"He's asleep. I want to be asleep, too. You should lay off the speed."

"Did someone say something? Put him on, Zeke."

Zeke's almost got the phone back in the cradle when Casey wakes up and blinks at him. "Did the phone ring?" Zeke sighs and hands him the receiver. Casey's kicked off his blanket again and his skin is chilly. Zeke rests his hand on his shoulder and thinks about pulling a blanket over him, but decides against it.

"Yes?" Casey says into the receiver. Then he's silent for a long time. Zeke hears Delilah's voice murmur, but he can't make out any words. Casey's eyes are half-lidded with sleep, dark and glassy in the gloom.

"Oh," Casey says, but it's more a sigh than a word. His free hand moves restlessly on his chest. It's hard to tell for sure, but Zeke is pretty sure he's blushing.

Zeke's all the way awake now. At three fucking am. Casey moves next to him, a little uncomfortable squirm and there's no doubt what Delilah's saying to him.

Casey's hand's even wandered down his body a little. He might have forgotten Zeke's there at all. He's touching his belly in twitchy little strokes.

It's fascinating. Zeke's almost prepared to wait and watch and see if Casey'll just jerk off right there in the bed. He congratulates Delilah on catching him when his defences are down.

Then Casey says "Oh" again, in a soft murmur, and Zeke crawls down the bed. It's easier like this, in the dark, with Casey's attention on Delilah. Casey chokes out something incoherent when he feels Zeke's mouth, and jerks forward. Zeke puts a hand on his hip and hears Delilah's laughter, faint and tinny.

*

Casey calls his parents again on Thursday. His bruises are green and yellow in mottled patterns over his face. "I am going to school," Casey says and he's twisting the phone line around his hand again. "I'm just feeling-- no, I just thought, it'd be better if I--"

Delilah's pressed herself against his back and is licking his neck. Casey looks miserable and tries not to squirm. Zeke sits at the kitchen table and watches.

"Yeah, at Zeke's. Yeah, okay--"

Delilah reaches over him and snatches the receiver from his hand. "Hi," she says brightly, "this is Delilah Profitt. I just wanted to tell you that we're taking excellent care of Casey... Yes, that's my grandmother! You know her! She's great, she's great. I haven't seen her in a while, but--"

Casey tears loose of her grip and leans against the wall, his eyes falling closed.

"Oh, you know how that is, Mrs Connor. Senior year. We have a lot to do. Oh yeah, he's eating." She laughs and adds, "And no laundry problems, either. Yes! It was lovely to talk to you, Mrs Connor."

Casey rubs his elbows and walks out.

*

Later, Zeke lifts him onto the kitchen table and sucks his dick while Delilah watches, bright-eyed like a cat. Casey grips the table edge tightly and moans, and Zeke has to sneak glimpses at his face every once in a while.

"You look like a retard when you come," Delilah tells Casey, but she kisses him and holds him down when Zeke fucks him.

*

Casey's parents aren't there when he does go home, on Sunday evening. He stands in the dark hall for a while and listens to Zeke peel out of the drive.

"Welcome home," he says to himself, and goes up to his room to unpack his stuff.

It's exactly like he left it, even though he feels like he's been away for a year. His mother has dusted between his things on the desk and shelves. There's a small pile of folded clothes on his bed, things that were in the hamper when he left.

He turns on his computer, he puts the picture of Delilah back on the wall, the pictures of Zeke back in the stash, his dirty clothes in the hamper. He sits on his bed and can't think of anything to do.

He was never really bored before. He sleeps on top of the covers for a few hours and knows he won't be able to sleep the whole night.

He wakes up at four and goes out to sit on the front steps and watch the street. He wishes he'd snatched some cigarettes from Zeke. It seems like a good night for smoking.

*

"Morning, son," his father says when he comes down to breakfast the next morning. "Project all done now?"

"Yeah," he says, and eats pancakes in silence. Kitchens will never seem quite the same to him now, he thinks. He notices that his parents don't talk. They've probably not talked in a while. He tries not to wonder whether they ever were young enough to fuck on the kitchen table.

His mother runs up and hugs him before he goes to school.

"You're all grown up," she whispers. Casey wishes Zeke would come and pick him up.

*

He's at home again when she comes back from work. Zeke wasn't in school at all and Casey went home and sat on his bed again. His mother walks in when he's changing his shirt. She stands in the doorway and watches him.

"Is everything all right?" she asks. He pulls the shirt down.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Try not to get into fights," she says. He blinks stupidly at her and she leaves.

*

She must have been worried, though, because his father comes in a little later and sits gingerly on his computer chair. "How's school?" he says at first, and Casey says, "Fine," as he usually does.

"Is there someone you don't get along with there?"

"No one in particular," Casey says.

"Your mother said you had some-- Is that a black eye?" and he leans forward and peers into Casey's face.

"I walked into a door," Casey says, without raising his voice at all. He'd almost prefer another black eye to this conversation.

"I understand that you're in a difficult age, son, but it's not a good idea to get into trouble now. You want to go to college, don't you?"

"Yeah," he says, but he's not sure anymore. He can't think forward. Every thought stops somewhere at Zeke's house.

*

Zeke's not in school on Tuesday, either. Delilah walks right past Casey in the hall without even looking at him. Gabe pushes him into a trashcan after history and the lid cuts his hand. He licks the cut, and his thoughts stop at Zeke's door again.

"I stumbled," he tells his dad, and can't stand their suspicious eyes. He thinks he might puke in his lamb stew. He sleeps on his bed again, in his clothes, and when he wakes up at eight PM, he has to lock himself in the bathroom to stop himself from calling Zeke. Or Delilah.

At nine thirty, he throws up, and his mother decides that he shouldn't go to school the next day.

"I'm okay," he tries, but she's a stubborn woman and his father concurs. He sits on the steps again for hours that night.

 

At ten am, he calls Zeke's house. He's pretty sure Zeke won't be there. That makes it easier to call.

Delilah picks up the phone and Casey's ice cold and sweaty and almost hangs up on her.

"Is that you, Case?" she says, though, and he has to answer.

"Yeah."

"Sick of the 'rents already?"

He bites his fingers because he can't answer her. He hears Zeke in the background. Delilah's voice, muffled and distant. She's put her hand over the phone.

"Sit tight, we're gonna rescue you," she says just as he opens his mouth to say, "Help me."

*

He doesn't wait outside although he wants to. Instead, he sits in his room and leafs through his biology textbook and tries to tell himself he's interested in it. When the doorbell rings, he drops the book on the floor.

"That was a booty call, wasn't it?" Delilah says with a little grin. "You have to practice your lines a little, though." Casey stuffs his hands tightly in his pockets so he doesn't touch her and walks down the drive to Zeke's car.

He gets in the back, and Delilah follows him. Zeke says, "Hey, man."

Casey says, "Hey, man." His stomach flutters.

"You have bags the size of my matched luggage under your eyes," Delilah says, and he drops his head against her shoulder and closes his eyes. Delilah's hand slides along his side and under his shirt.

"He should just stay here," he hears Zeke say at some point, and Delilah laughs softly.

"Yeah, sure, and then we can sue them for custody." Casey's almost dozed off, his head in Delilah's lap, her hand still soft on his hip. He has no idea how long they've been driving. Zeke's house is twenty minutes away, but they might as well have been on the road for two hours.

"Fuck them," Zeke says sharply. There's music playing, Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare. Casey remembers a road trip when he was little, maybe eleven. He can't remember where they were going, but he remembers waking up with his head in his mother's lap, curled up on the backseat. His father played Waylon Jennings, not Alice Cooper, though, but the sound of the engine and the wheels on asphalt were the same, the feeling of being in a warm bubble in space.

He doesn't remember his mother smelling like aftershave and sex. He moves a little and slides his hand under Delilah's skirt. She's not wearing underwear. She laughs again, and Casey drifts.


	7. Slip

Delilah gets to school and finds Gabe banging Casey's head against his locker in the hall. Casey's hanging limp in his hands.

"Sublimating again, Gabe?" she asks. That falls flat. How annoying is it to have cutting wit when the targets don't get the insults? Casey gets it though, and he tears loose and meets her eyes quickly before scurrying off.

*

"He was begging for it," Gabe says. He's started to look like he's expecting something from her, and she realises he thinks he's next in line now that he's captain. Yeah, fat chance. She's done with jocks.

"And you just jumped at the chance. I guess you don't get enough of the old hump and grind on the field."

She walks away, and he yells, "Bitch!" after her.

*

Casey's in the dark room, the red light drawing blood on his face, hollowing out his eyes and cheeks. She locks the door and leans against the wall. He doesn't move.

"I'm not wearing underwear," she says quietly, and he comes closer. She doesn't even have to tell him what to do, he just drops to his knees in front of her like her thoughts and wishes have been mainlined straight into his nervous system. His hands are cold when he pushes up her skirt, his breath staccato damp heat on her thighs.

She slips her leg over his shoulder and he quivers under her, but he can take it. His hands warm up against the fold of her hip, his tongue touches her clit lightly, as if he's still asking permission even after she catches him between her legs and locks him there.

She grinds her pelvis against his face and he gets it, gets to it. She leans her head against the wall and stares at the red light, the shadows on the walls, black and red and grey, shadows and the zings and flashes of cold and heat racing each other through her body. She puts her fingers in her mouth and bites them to stop from crying out.

Casey makes small, muffled sounds and she thinks about getting Zeke to fuck him while he's licking her, thinks about what sounds he'd make then. Feeling the thrusts go through him into her, it would be special.

She wishes she could kiss him afterwards, lick the tangy taste off his mouth, maybe bite his lip until the taste mixes with blood. But her makeup is probably already smeared, and there isn't time to reapply her face. Instead, she slips her fingers into his mouth and he sucks them and stares at her with eyes turned dark brown in the filtered light.

She gets up and smoothes her skirt down. "Later, Case," she says and leaves. She has English and History, and practice after school.

*

She's picking her way through something that probably started life as a Caesar salad. She's sticky in her skirt and rethinking the whole no underwear thing, but it does give her a little thrill. It's okay. Donna and Mariel are cataloguing the eligible bachelors in the school for her. Donna says, "Zeke Tyler," and they both laugh bright, dismissive laughs. Delilah smiles at her plate.

Stan taps her on the shoulder and she sees the girls' eyes light up. "Hey, Delilah," he says and he's making _let's talk_ eyes at her.

"Excuse me," she says and gets up. Donna is winking at her like this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

"How are you?" Stan asks. His face is in serious mode.

"What do you want?"

"I just thought we'd talk."

"I was eating, you know."

"Well, I never see you around." Still serious. He's stubborn as all hell. In fact, his refusal to back down is the only interesting thing about him. It's also infuriating.

On the other hand, right now she could use a break from the bachelors of Herrington High, so she says, "Okay, okay, what do you want?" and follows him.

He leans against a vending machine, squirms a little where he stands, pushes his hands into his pockets. "I really just wanted to. Are you okay? You've been a little..."

She raises her eyebrows slowly. The trick is to never let anything show. Stan always shows too much.

"I don't know. I was just. You're acting different since."

"Who died and made you my dad?" she asks slowly.

"I care about you, Delilah," he says. His earnestness would be endearing if she wasn't ready to claw gouges down his cheeks. "I just...didn't know you'd take it so hard--"

She's almost surprised by her own laughter. It's a little too shrill in her own ears, edged with hysteria. The cafeteria seems to have fallen entirely silent and her voice rolls between the walls.

She hasn't thought about him in weeks and he's standing here with his earnest eyes and his hands stuffed in his pockets, asking if she's still pining for him.

She swallows her laughter and almost tells him. It would feel so fucking good to lean in and tell him, but there are people everywhere and she sees Donna and Mariel watching, their noses almost twitching with curiosity. Gabe and the rest of the team are there. Casey's bowed over his lunch in a corner, but she knows he's watching, too.

"Go back to your books, Stan," she says instead.

 

"Does he want you back?" Mariel asks immediately when she returns to the table.

"I've moved on," Delilah says.

"So he's not seeing anyone else now?" Donna asks.

"Up for grabs," Delilah says dismissively and goes back to her salad.

"Who have we forgotten?" Donna goes on. "Gabe's captain, of course..."

"Stop trying to set me up with people," Delilah says and there's a quick, breathless silence around her.

"It's just..." Donna says after a while.

"You know there's a rumour about you and, like, _Zeke_?" says Mariel.

"A _what_?" Delilah puts down her fork, because this is not the time to have shaky hands.

"It's like, totally stupid, of course," Mariel adds quickly, but her eyes are sharp.

"Eliza Schofield says she saw you in his car," Donna says. "But she's, like, always coming up with stuff."

Delilah throws a glance over her shoulder. Zeke's on his way out, and she sees the look he exchanges with Casey. They're getting sloppy, she thinks. It's time to stop being stupid.

"Eliza Schofield needs to stop hitting Zeke up for dust," she says, but they're still looking at her.

*

"So, how about it, Delilah?" Gabe says a couple of days later when they're being jostled in the hall after the bell rings. He's handsome, moderately intelligent, popular, clean. He's the captain of the team. She takes a deep breath.

"Yeah," she says.

"What?"

"Take me out."

*

She goes out with Gabe and doesn't call Casey or Zeke, and she's relieved and anxious at the same time.

"I'm thinking about Illinois," Gabe says over a hazelnut latte, and Delilah realises she hasn't thought about college since everything started.

"Sarah Lawrence for me," she improvises. She has no idea if her grades will hold. It still doesn't feel like she's regaining her senses. The thought of college doesn't set off sparks of anticipation anymore.

"Stan was looking at a scholarship for Arizona, but then he went and quit the team," Gabe says with an air of slightly smug concern.

"Stan probably has a plan," she says. She lets Gabe kiss her goodnight. She thinks she'll probably sleep with him three or four dates in.

*

The next day, Zeke sidles up to her in the hall. He slides a hand over her ass, none-too-discreetly and says, "So, I hear you're dating Gabe the Great now."

Zeke's not the one she's worried about, so she says, "You thought you had some kind of say in this?"

"Nah, just checking. I don't think Casey'll be all a-flutter when you bring your new boytoy home to dinner, though."

"Oh, fuck off, Zeke. Since when did you care?"

"Hidden depths," he says.

*

"What are you hanging around him for?" Gabe asks when she gets to her locker. He's leaning against it like he now owns it.

"Got stuck working on something with him," she says. He kisses her and she realises she hasn't been to Zeke's in four days and she hasn't seen more than a few glimpses of Casey since then. And she misses it. Them.

The thought of kissing Gabe while thinking about Casey makes her smile. Gabe smiles back at her.

*

He's going to fuck her in his car. She lets him push up her skirt and thinks, _yeah, classy shit, Gabe._ He's muscular where Zeke is sinewy and Casey is bony. The first time Stan fucked her, he took her home and put on music. Maybe she should tell Gabe about that.

She could tell him about the last time she did it in a car, though. In the passenger seat of Zeke's GTO, pretzeled up in Casey's lap with his fingers digging into her hips, Alice Cooper blaring over the sound of wheels, the landscape a blur outside the window, Casey's small grunts soft in her ears.

That was car sex to be remembered. Gabe's not bad, but she only comes because she wills herself to.

*

He takes her home, kisses her outside the door and leaves her leaning against the tile wall, digging for her keys.

"New boy?" her mother asks.

"New captain of the team," Delilah says and her mother nods. She was head cheerleader of Herrington High twenty years ago. Delilah's thought about this and figured that her mother's current state should be enough to send anyone scrambling for the chess club. Delilah likes to think she's a stronger person than that, but on days like these, she wonders if it's worth it.

*

She wakes up at three am, uncomfortably sweaty and hot. She kicks off the cover and lies on her back. She doesn't know if she was dreaming, but it feels like she might have been. Her palms feel empty and dry.

The room sits quiet and dark around her. Her mother is still up; she can hear the TV going downstairs. Delilah slips out of bed and pulls on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, an old sweater, sneakers, a jacket. Doesn't bother with the lenses, just her glasses.

"Are you going out?" her mother asks when she passes the living room door. There's no light on but the TV, flickering blue light. Her mother's curled in the sofa with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Delilah thinks she might be sober. They could talk maybe, watch a late movie together.

"Yeah," she says and closes her hand around her car keys in the jacket pocket.

"Don't be too late," her mother says without turning away from the TV. She's watching an old Mel Gibson movie. She loves Mel Gibson. Delilah can't stand him.

*

The night outside is perfectly still and cold, with frost on the ground, lit bright white by the half moon. She stands next to her car for a full five minutes and stares at a maple. There's a dry leaf still clinging to a branch, and it shivers minutely in a breeze too gentle to feel.

"I'm turning into Casey," she tells the night and gets in the car.

*

She's letting herself into Zeke's house when it occurs to her that she has a spare key, she knows where the coffee is, she can find the linen closet and knows the floor in the downstairs bathroom is orange because Zeke's parents had a fight about it in the store and Zeke picked the colour. She doesn't know Gabe's middle name.

Casey's there. She thought he might be. They're both asleep, and Delilah has to smile when she sees them. They look innocent and adorable, something people might coo and sigh over; smooth faces and dark lashes, Zeke's hand resting on Casey's shoulder. He moves while she watches, pulls Casey closer and presses his face into Casey's neck.

Delilah has never slept through the night with anyone. She doesn't even like the thought of it: smushed up against someone, fighting over blankets, morning breath, snoring. She likes to have space and the freedom to toss and turn if she wants to.

Casey rolls over, away from Zeke, and Zeke's hand curls and searches for him before lying still again.

Delilah kicks her shoes off and slides up the bed to lie in the gap between them. They move towards her, mumble in their sleep; lock her in with arms and bodies. She presses her face into Zeke's arm, her back against Casey's chest and closes her eyes.

 

She wakes to a hand on her shoulder, Zeke's face close to her, his voice. "What are you doing here?" She blinks and squints.

"Sleeping," she says. Casey's arms are wrapped around her waist, and he's still asleep, his breath sending shivers down her spine.

"Thought you were out with the boyfriend," he says, and she feels Casey wake up behind her: he jerks out of sleep and freezes. Zeke moves, looks over her, and she knows they're looking at each other. Zeke's face is in shadow.

"I don't sleep with him," she says quickly.

Zeke sits up and now he's glowering at her, his eyebrows pulled together. "Just fuck him, huh?"

She feels Casey pull his hands away, quickly, as if her skin suddenly burned his fingers and moves away entirely. Her back feels cold where it misses his body heat. She hears his feet on the floor, tiptoe steps vanishing down the hall.

She pushes herself up. "Are you jealous, Zeke? Cause it doesn't suit you." His eyes slide over her, beyond her. She can't hear anything moving in the house, as if Casey simply melted into the walls and disappeared. "You're not the cornerstone of loyalty yourself," she adds. She sounds defensive, and she hates it. More than that, she hates the fact that he knows it - his expression smoothes out; he's got her.

"Do I look like I give a fuck who you screw in your free time?" he asks. "I meant _him_\--" and he gestures at the door and the empty hall outside it, "--he doesn't take shit like this with grace."

She blinks at him. She means to cut back with something, _when did you grow a conscience?_ or _did that stop you?_ but then she's too busy boiling into a fury.

He's sliding out of bed, naked and sleek in the pale dawn, and she stares at his back. He has a scattering of shallow scratches there, faintly visible as darker lines in the hesitant light. Casey must have made them, scratched deep enough to cut welts in the skin with those ragged stumps of nails he has.

Some independent, over-sexed part of her brain is wondering whether Zeke ever let Casey top him, whether Casey would even _want_ to, while the rest of her is standing up and walking towards him, saying, "This is not fucking San Francisco, asshole, we're not free to dance on the merry threesome float with the rest of the deviants. I have a reputation."

"Can't stop slumming though, can you?" he says and she slaps him in the face, hard. Somewhere, she hears a door slam. Zeke's outlined against the window, still shamelessly naked, carelessly naked, not even bothering to rub his face. He cocks his head and she hardly sees his hand coming, but it leaves a print burned into her face. He has big hands. No guy has ever slapped her before. Ever. "You _are_ slumming, though. Don't forget that."

"And you forget that I'm not Casey, you can't beat me into submission."

She thinks she sees him flinch, but it might just have been a trick of the light. There are headlights moving outside the window. "I'm not trying to," he says, softer than she expected. "I like you better when you're a bitch."

She remembers why she slept with him in the first place; that easy way he has of being entirely unpredictable. Twisted signals. Soft mouth and hard eyes. She almost laughs at her own stupidity - what a cliché, going for the bad boy. Then she remembers Casey, soft everywhere and bleeding openly. That's not such a cliché.

She's kissed Casey, long kisses, just making out on the couch or on the bed, with Zeke's hands somewhere on her body, or on Casey's body.

It'd be a good world where she could combine her life with her ambitions. She almost wants to tell Zeke to get a grip, give up the drugs, join the team, start showing up in school more regularly so he'd make a better boyfriend.

Casey'll never make a good boyfriend, so that's a loss.

She looks at Zeke, who's scratching his belly and yawning now, as if the conversation is suddenly boring him. Zeke will never be respectable, either. "Why the hell do I even hang around?" she says suddenly, and he just shrugs.

"Cause we're more fun than Gabe the Great," he says with a little emphasis on 'we', as if they're some kind of single entity. Zekasey. A boxed set. "That's a good pick, too. I mean, you don't want anyone too friendly. Think he wants in on the action? He's really fond of Casey."

She almost hits him again, but it'd be no use. This conversation is over. She toes on her shoes and heads for the door.

"You're not fucking me over, you're fucking Casey over," Zeke says behind her. She'd like to ask him if this is some kind of big revelation to him, but she doesn't. She didn't think it'd be a big revelation to _her_, but there it is.

*

"Didn't stop you," she says instead and goes to get her coat off the peg by the door. It's not on the peg anymore, though; it's on the floor in a heap. Zeke's cool enough to not yell anything stupid after her. She doesn't know where Casey is.

She doesn't know where her car keys are, either. Or her car, in fact. She stands on the doorstep and squints into the front drive. She's not wearing her glasses, so she has to go back inside.

"Casey took my car," she says when she marches past Zeke in the hall. He's still naked.

He's dressed before she's found her glasses. "You wanna hurry up?" he mutters at her.

"Hurry where?"

Zeke doesn't turn around, just heads out the door. "You wanna catch him before he crosses the fucking state line?"

"He wouldn't."

"Think so? He was on his way to fucking Canada last time."

If she didn't know better, she'd say Zeke's scared. Zeke's the most unruffleable person she knows. She follows him out to his car, which is still there. Zeke and his car share a sort of scruffy charm. Delilah tries to picture Casey driving this car and almost laughs out loud. It's a stick; she's not sure Casey could even get it out of the drive.

*

Zeke drives very fast, and Delilah buckles up and hangs on to the door handle. It's almost five am and getting lighter. Zeke taps the wheel and doesn't turn on the radio.

After a while, Delilah says, "He'd probably go home first, wouldn't he?" Zeke makes an illegal U-turn. Delilah's head bangs against the window.

*

Her car isn't in Casey's drive. The house is dark. "Fuck," Zeke says quietly and lights a cigarette. He hands Delilah the pack without even asking.

"If he's gone, he's long gone," she says. It's easy to say it, but the silence after is soup-thick and the air in the car is smoky and just as thick. Her throat hurts.

"Fuck," Zeke says again. He's stopped tapping the wheel; he's gone entirely still. It doesn't look reassuring. "MotherFUCK. I'm dropping you off."

That was a quick change of gear, and she almost flinches with it. "What, are you gonna look for him?"

"Don't have anything better to do today," he says, and Delilah has already opened her mouth to say, "Neither have I," when she remembers cheerleading practice and her date with Gabe and study group and the school paper committee. Life being life again. It seems impossible that Casey could be gone. She's never even seen him drive.

Zeke's already heading towards her house, but she spends the drive trying to pin down any excuse good enough to ditch her previous engagements. "One of my _other_ boyfriends stole my car" wouldn't do.

It takes her a couple of blocks to notice that she thought about Casey and Zeke as her boyfriends without any alarms going off. The thought isn't very disturbing in face of the missing car and missing Casey. She wants to chew her nails for the first time since she started getting manicures three years ago.

*

Her car is in the drive. In her drive, parked with one wheel on the grass and the driver's side door open. They sit in Zeke's car in silence for a few minutes. Zeke scratches his head and drops ashes in his hair. Delilah reaches out and brushes it away. Zeke grabs her wrist.

"Lucky you," he says. "Got your car back."

"Fuck the car," she snaps and yanks her hand loose and gets out. Her car is empty. The keys are on the driver's seat. "What is he _doing_?"

They walk around the house, around the block, around the house again. Delilah goes inside, but her mother is still up.

"You didn't see anything?"

"What should I see?" she says, and Delilah can smell her from the door.

"She didn't notice," she tells Zeke when she goes back outside.

Zeke's smoking again, standing in the yard with his hands in his pockets, the cigarette hanging from his lower lip. She thinks he probably doesn't do it on purpose, but it looks like he's posing. She wouldn't swear it's not thought-out, though.

"Isn't this like five blocks from his house if you cut across the park?" he says, suddenly. "He probably just went home."

It makes sense, somehow. Casey'd know how things work. Casey's not stupid. He knows more about the pecking order in school than Zeke, she's pretty sure of that. Casey'd understand.

"He didn't have the balls to just steal your car and head for the border," Zeke goes on. He almost sounds disappointed. Disappointed and relieved, but not necessarily in that order.

"Not yet," she says.

*

Casey's in school in the morning, slipping around a corner down the hall. She only sees the back of his head, but it's enough. She feels stupidly relieved. Stupid, stupid, she thinks, because when Gabe touches her arm, she has to fight not to recoil.

"Hey, baby," he says and slides his arms around her. He's not so bad, she thinks. Zeke ambles past them and he nods at her, hardly more than an arch of the eyebrows.

"Class," she tells Gabe and slips out of his reach. In class, Casey sits up front, by the wall. He's bent over his books and doesn't look up once the whole fifty minutes.

She's doodling in her notebook, and finally she writes, _hey, fuckwit, don't drive my car without me around, k_ and tears off the page. She slips it into his pocket when they're pushed together in the throng after class. She feels about twelve years old, but it's a light feeling.

*

He's right behind her for a while; she can somehow feel him in the air like she has antennae to pick up his wavelength. She knows he follows when she ducks into the library. She picks down a book at random - _Crime and Punishment_ \- and stares at the pages. _\--two fresh blows with the hatchet on the crown of the old woman's head. The blood spurted out in streams and the body rolled heavily over. At that moment--_ He stands next to her, and she can see a little scratch on his hand and his bitten nails and the top of his head.

She's never been addicted to anything. She's never wanted to be. She knows Zeke is the same. This is so fucking strange.

"I'm okay," he mumbles, directing it at the bookshelf. She doesn't know if he's apologising or waiting for her to explain. It doesn't matter.

The library is quiet and smells musty and unused. The whole school should probably be condemned. She steps closer to him. _\--it was Raskolnikoff who had been caught in a trap, a snare, an ambush of some kind or other. The mine was, perhaps, already charged--_ She's close enough that his sleeve brushes her arm and she touches his side. There's no one in the library except Mrs Brummel and she's somewhere in the stacks - Delilah can hear her shuffling steps.

"Have you read this?" she says. He takes the book and opens it. She stares at his eyelashes - the light comes from above and they throw long, spidery shadows on his cheeks.

"_'A little cock, did you say? A little cock?' cried the sutler._"

She answers his grin and takes one more step closer. She can rest her hand against the front of his jeans without making it obvious. "That's out of context."

"Everything's more fun out of context."

"So, hm." She wants to say, "no hard feelings?" but it doesn't quite want to come out that way. "See you at Zeke's tonight?" she says. _See you at Zeke's, see Zeke at Zeke's, see me at Zeke's._ She puts a little pressure on his crotch, enough to feel him, and he closes his eyes and nods quickly.

The light makes him glow, and it heats the top of her head, and it's not so bad, having a double life. She takes the book from his unresisting hand and puts it back on the shelf.

The library door creaks a little, and they both jump.

"Delilah! What are you doing here?"

"Studying, Gabe," she says carefully. Casey's backed off several steps. Gabe saunters over. He's not so bad, she thinks. Not so bad.

"You can stop stalking my girlfriend now, asshat," he says to Casey, leans in and fake-punches him. "Boo!"

She can see Casey's mouth set and his shoulders square up, but when she's almost sure he'll bitch back and she'll have to do something, he just throws her a glance and walks out. She thinks he walks taller now than before. She might be imagining it, though.

"You can stop kicking him around now," she tells Gabe. "What'd he ever do to you?"

"When did you start caring? It's like he's glued to your ass lately. I don't know if I should be jealous or something." He says it lightly, but there's an edge of suspicion there she doesn't like. It's too hot in here now.

"Come on, baby," she says. "I have stuff to do." And she puts her arm around him and leans close and lets him kiss her before they walk out.


	8. Slide

Casey can't think of many things he likes less than PE. The flagpole maybe. Having his head stuck in the toilet. Although that's likely to happen before or after PE, anyway, since the locker room has a much higher asshole concentration than the hallways.

It doesn't really matter today, though. Zeke picked him up at home this morning and kissed him in the car, surprising and hot and long enough to leave him breathless. That might be as close as Zeke has ever come to an apology for anything, although Casey's not sure what he's apologising for or if he knows he's apologising at all.

And Delilah in the library, with the light in her hair, highlighting dark brown with auburn and rust, the mischief in her eyes - he thinks about getting her in that light again and photographing her. Those would be pictures she'd like the world to see. He felt as if she was making some sort of effort to treat him like a human being. An apology again.

He may be smiling to himself. He tries to stop, but it's not happening. There's hustle and bustle around him in the room, but it's far away and insignificant.

"--Delilah?" he hears and blinks in a sudden rush of reality. Gabe's voice, and then Stan's:

"We're still friends, but hey, I moved on."

"Good, so no hard feelings. She's something else." Casey can hear Gabe's grin, and see it in front of him. That obnoxious, smug fucking grin that says 'I'm someone and you're nothing." They're coming this way. Casey turns to his locker and pretends to dig through it.

"She sure is," Stan says.

"A good handful," Gabe says and snickers.

"Watch out, that's my ex you're talking about." More laughter and a hand hits Casey's back and bangs him into the locker. He pushes himself back and thinks, no no no, shut UP, but his mouth was smiling and not happy about having to stop, and it's like he's lost all common sense.

"Keep your fucking hands to yourself," he says, but it's like someone else said it and he just stares in horror from somewhere hidden inside.

"Whoah, what did you say?" Gabe asks slowly. Casey turns around. Gabe's not as tall as Zeke, but he's built.

"I said you need to stop groping me at every turn or people might start getting ideas," Casey says.

"Fuck, Casey, are you high?" Stan says, looking nervously amused. Casey thinks he'd be nervously amused, too, if he wasn't about to get pounded into mincemeat.

"I'm just sick of troglodytes pushing me around," he says, and Gabe grabs him by the collar and tugs him up. He can feel his body want to react the usual way, curling up to protect itself, going limp to appear harmless.

It would've been cooler if there'd been a flash of bright light and a booming voice calling his name - **_CASEY, STAND UP AND FIGHT_** \- but really, all there is to it is his legs coming up and kicking out and his head banging back against the lockers, rattling his teeth. His throat opens and a scream tears out. And there's rage that boils up furious fast before he even knows he's about to flip out.

"Shit!" he hears Stan's voice yell, and there's a rumble of other voices somewhere in the background, but clearest of all is Gabe's muffled grunt when he doubles over and lets Casey fall.

It's not over then, of course. Gabe's a football player and he gets kicked around worse on the field. Casey is stuck between a wall of Gabe and a wall of locker doors and he bit his tongue before and he does it again when he hits the lockers this time. But he pushes through that thin slice of pain and kicks, pushes right into Gabe's fists and realises that this is how he can get back: just not give a fuck.

He wishes he had better nails to scratch with, long vicious ones. Gabe's big enough to lift him and lock him in. Instead, he bites down on Gabe's arm, bites hard enough that his jaw might break, his teeth ache and the muscles in his neck scream from exhaustion.

Stan's still yelling at them, trying to break them up - "Jesus Christ, would you two just STOP! Gabe, come ON, it's not worth it!" - but it's not working. Casey finally has to let go or lose a tooth, and the floor comes up to hit him in the face. He has time to just about curl up and take the kick with his ribs and not his solar plexus, and he hears the crack. But it's not over.

He's still waiting for the fucking beam of light; it should feel _different_, shouldn't it? He's fighting, he's still not afraid. But it hurts the same way it always does. Maybe he forgot to yell the secret magic war cry.

He doesn't hear anyone laughing, though.

The next time Gabe's foot comes into view, he grabs at it. His chest hurts, but he holds on, and Gabe loses his footing and comes crashing down. The world has narrowed down to each painful breath and getting up and grabbing the first thing that comes to hand - someone's muddy Doc Marten; maybe Lucas or Jerry, he can't remember who wears combat boots to school, someone. Gabe's on the floor trying to get up and Casey hits him in the face with the boot.

"Fuck you," he says, not a scream but a whisper at first, but growing louder "FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU, you fucking ASSHOLE!" and hits again and again.

He's suddenly, soberingly aware of silence around him. There's the beam of light at last, and it's inside his head and says, "get the fuck outta here."

He drops the boot and runs.

*

He doesn't stop until he's already well off school grounds. He's been going on nothing but momentum, and when he stops running, his stomach catches up with him and he revisits his lunch on the curb. Every breath stabs deep in his chest and he's pretty sure he has a cracked rib. He made Gabe bleed. He has a fleeting, confused memory of a row of pale, staring faces as he stampeded out of the locker room. There are black patches flickering over the world and he leans forward and waits.

He thinks victory might taste sweeter if you think you'll get away with it. He has no idea. This just tastes bitter, of spent adrenaline and vomit. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and walks.

He's been running towards Zeke's house, automatically. He can't go home, anyway, not now, so he continues. Zeke won't be home. Doesn't matter.

By the time he gets to Zeke's house, he's wheezing and snapping for breath. He's heard about broken ribs puncturing lungs, but he figures he'd know if that happened. It just really fucking hurts to breathe, and he leans against the door and tries to take small breaths, slowly.

Zeke's house welcomes him with silence and solitude, and the clean, empty bathroom with its white tiles and bright orange floor and the mirror - this time he's not afraid of looking in it. His face looks okay, a little pale and his eyes are too wide and show a lot of white.

"Revenge...of the NERD," he says out loud. It's not funny, but he coughs out a squeaky, painful chuckle anyway and almost vomits again.

He hears the phones, electronic bleats from the kitchen, shrill rings from the living room, and freezes, forgets to breathe. People sometimes call Zeke's house - he's aware of this, but his heart insists on sitting in his throat like a rock. He wonders if it's possible to kill someone with a boot. He wonders what they do to you if you do.

He punches the wall. It hurts, but he didn't put everything into the punch. He thinks, _I'm not crazy enough yet_. It's not a particularly comforting thought. He rinses his mouth and goes downstairs and turns on the TV.

The phone rings again halfway through Passions, but he ignores it. It doesn't scare him this time, just feels sort of inevitable. He figures Gabe's probably not dead, but that doesn't really matter. Casey's fucked anyway. Zeke will smile - this will be amusing to him - and then he'll step back and let them lock Casey up and throw away the key.

He blinks and then Zeke's standing next to the sofa, pulling his hand through his hair and saying, "Casey, you crazy fuck, you really flipped out on them."

He sits up, but has to fall back down again because his ribcage is just not co-operating. His tongue feels swollen and angry in his mouth.

"Lemme see that," Zeke says. He pulls up Casey's shirt and his fingers wander lightly over Casey's chest. "You should've seen Gabe, man."

"I saw him," Casey says. "I was there."

"No, later, when Drake asked him who fucked up his face." Zeke's snickering softly, but his hands are gentle. "I should take you to the emergency room."

"No," Casey says.

"'kay," Zeke says. "I'll tape it for you."

Zeke's good at it; he could be a nurse, he's certainly got a better hand than Nurse Harper. Her hands always feel like she'd rather be slapping you. That's sort of strange, because Casey knows Zeke likes to slap, too. But he's good at this, gets the bandage tight without squeezing the breath out of Casey.

"Have you done this before?" Casey asks.

"Yeah," Zeke says and goes to dig his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. He sits next to Casey and smokes in silence for a while. Casey watches Springer with the sound on mute. One of the guys beating each other up over some piece of overbleached trailer trash looks sort of like Gabe if he squints.

The door upstairs slams and there are quick, light footsteps in the hall.

"Delilah's here," Zeke says. "Tell me something, Case, what was it that pushed you over the edge?"

Casey listens to Delilah yelling, "Are you down here? Casey? What the FUCK did you do?"

"I don't know," he says.

Zeke blows a wavery smoke ring. "Just flipped?"

"Just flipped."

Delilah stomps into the room. "I don't know whether to kick the shit out of you or fuck you stupid," she says. "What got into you? Don't tell me you actually started secreting testosterone all of a sudden."

"I think you're too late for both," Zeke says. "He was only giving as good as he got."

"I'm already stupid," Casey says. "And I fucked myself, I think."

"You broke his nose. Coach Willis wants to string you up in the flagpole. By the balls. Principal Drake called your parents." She cocks her head, a little like a cat studying something small and fluttering. "Oh, and you're suspended. Are you hurt?"

"No," Casey says at the same times as Zeke says, "Yeah."

"Bruised ribs," Casey says. Zeke's leaned closer and put his arm around Casey. His hand rests right below the bandage.

"Cracked," Zeke says. "Our boy's all growed up. I'm almost getting misty." He grins at Delilah, but his fingers move over Casey's skin in soft little strokes, and he leans even closer and whispers, "I wanted to see that, I wanted to see you kick his face in."

"I didn't kick him, I hit him with a boot," Casey says.

"You broke his nose," Zeke says and kisses his face, his nose. His hand slides up Casey's side, over the bandage on his chest, pushes Casey backwards. Casey folds under him and wonders if this is going to hurt.

I can always kick _his_ face in, he thinks, and even though he won't do it, it feels good to think it.

Zeke's gentle, though, mild as a kitten; soft tongue, light fingers. Casey sees Delilah stand on the other side of the coffee table. She looks like she still hasn't decided whether she wants to fuck or kill or maybe just bang her head against the wall. He unfolds his arm from where it's landed on Zeke's shoulder and reaches out towards her. It hurts a little when the muscles stretch over his ribs.

She comes to them. It's good.

*

The phone rings again at some point, but Casey grabs Zeke's hand when he moves to go pick it up. "Don't," he says, and Zeke stays.

"It's my phone," he says, but he smiles.

"There's someone at the door," Delilah says even later. She's stroking Casey's face, tracing his nose and mouth with light fingertips. Casey lies with his head on Zeke's stomach. He's starting to feel hungry, but his chest hurts a little and it's comfortable here. He's warm and tired.

"Mmmh," he says, and then it registers. "What?"

"Someone just knocked," Delilah says.

"Must be the cops," Zeke says with a little chuckle. Casey hears his voice rumble through his chest and shivers. He doesn't want to get up. Maybe it _is_ the cops - maybe Zeke knows something he doesn't.

He hears the knock himself this time. Zeke mutters something and pushes him off. Casey thinks about begging him not to open. He almost does it, too. He's never really been proud. But he fought back today, and it would be wrong somehow to go right back to being the way he's always been straight away.

It takes a while to find their clothes, get them on in the right order, and the knocking takes on a belligerent tone. In the hall, Casey stands just out of sight of the front door and listens to Zeke open it. Delilah hovers behind him, her hands light on his shoulders, her breath in his hair. His chest hurts, but it's not just the ribs.

"Zeke," his father says. He sounds almost tired. Not angry like his knocks. "Is Casey here?"

There's a silence. Casey notices that he's wringing his hands. He tries to stop - it looks stupid, like he's a character in a Jane Austen novel - but he doesn't know what else to do with his hands.

"Relax, they're not gonna flog you in the town square," Delilah whispers and slides her hands around his waist, covers his hands. Her fingers are warm and longer and thinner than his. He wants to turn around and kiss her, twine his hands in her hair, push his knee between her legs - because he can. He thinks he's entitled now. At some point, it's become his right. She can push him away, but she can't say he's not allowed to try.

He shivers. He's never thought that before.

Zeke's voice, low and careful: "Why, is there something wrong, Mr Connor?" And Zeke's voice is his, too. Casey can call him and hear it when he wants to. He can come here and Zeke will nod at him and go about his business, or pull him closer and push him to his knees, or throw him down on the bed. Or let Casey creep closer in the sofa and tuck his head into the crook of Zeke's neck.

"We got a call from Principal Drake," Casey's father says. "Casey! If you're here, you better show up right now! You're already in enough trouble."

"Hey, hey, Mr Connor--" Zeke says abruptly, and Casey knows his father is trying to push inside, past Zeke. "I'm sorry, this is my house--"

"Where are your parents, Zeke?"

Silence again. Delilah squeezes Casey's fingers. "Luxembourg," Zeke says. He's probably lying.

"Casey's coming home right now. All right? And no arguments. CASEY!"

Casey thinks about running - he could make it out the back before his father notices. He could leave Zeke to block the way.

Zeke _would_.

He shrugs out of Delilah's arms. "I'm here, Dad," he says.

*

In the car, his father talks and Casey stares out the window. Frost on the trees, frost on the ground. The sky is clear and the sunlight bounces off windows and roofs. A murder of crows leap from a maple in a flapping, fluttering cloud of black. "Suspended," his father says. The crows circle and seem to follow the car. "Grounded," his father says. An old lady with a fat dog tottering down the sidewalk; the dog and the lady could be the same species. "Professional help," his father says.

"What?" Casey asks, startled. The old lady and her dog disappear behind them.

"This trouble. Your mother and I don't understand what's gotten into you. This has something to do with your new friends. Who is this Zeke? He never seems to tell us anything about his home. We had to call the school and ask for his address."

"He's just a guy," Casey says. _Where were you when I was afraid of him?_ he thinks. His father frowns at the street ahead as if it's personally offended him. The radio is on, but the sound is turned down so low that Casey's can't even make out what song is playing. His father always does that, these days, and it drives Casey nuts.

"Drugs? Are you on drugs, son? Is Zeke involved in something?"

"I'm not on drugs, Dad."

"Well, this is the end of that," his father says. "We can't have any more outbursts like this. Principal Drake told me you broke that boy's nose."

"He broke my fucking rib first," Casey mutters at the window. It's framed with delicate filigree patterns of frost. The heater on this side must be out of commission again.

"_What_ did you say?" his father says sharply and slows down.

Casey scratches at the frost on the window. He's tired and it hurts to breathe, and his father will never listen. "Nothing," Casey says.

*

His father catches him by the arm when he tries to slip away to his room, and he winces. He's starting to feel like his entire body has been pummelled and broken and beaten. He's pretty sure his right side is one big bruise.

"What's that?" his father asks, and before Casey can tear loose and back off, he's pulled up his shirt and found the bandage.

"Good lord!" his mother exclaims from the kitchen door. Casey pulls down his shirt, but it's too late; they're crowding him in and his father's saying, "Getting into fights and what's next? Guns?" and his mother's saying, "We have to take him to the emergency room, George, what if he's really hurt?" and his father says, "I don't know what we're supposed to do with him--" and Casey finally opens his mouth and snaps out a "Stop!"

"What?" his father says.

"Stop poking at me," Casey says. "I'm okay. I just want to go to bed." He's tired now, and aching all over and they're staring at him like they don't know who he is or what he's done with their son.

They let him go, reluctantly, and he knows they'll argue about it, fight in that stressed, hurried way they have, never listening to each other. They'll probably call the family doctor in the morning.

He stands in front of the mirror and looks at his body. There's a cluster of fading love bites on his shoulder and collarbone - a couple fresh ones, too. Zeke and Delilah leave marks on him; he leaves marks on them. There's a few scratches and bruises on his hips and thighs that anyone would recognise for what they are.

He hopes the fucking boot print on the side of his chest will be enough of a distraction.

*

He hears them argue with hushed voices in the bedroom down the hall.

"He's confused," his mother says.

"What's there to be confused about? He's an A student, he's half a year from graduation."

"He's seventeen years old, George. It's not an easy time."

"Goddamn. This is NOT the time to start having teenage crises. We need to get him straightened out."

Casey puts his hands in front of his mouth to choke the giggle. He thinks they'll need to do more than ground him to straighten him out. He has a sudden urge to slam his door open and tell them he's irreversibly bent; queer as a three-dollar bill, a sexual pervert and hopeless deviant. It'd feel pretty damn good, he thinks. Their faces.

And then they'd run for the phone and sign him up for military school. And he'd have to kill himself. Or them. He thinks about Gabe's face when he first fought back. And the blood. It wasn't very clear at the time - everything was a haze. But now it's all there, burned into his brain. He can even hear the sound of the heel of the boot hitting Gabe's nose. A dull thud and a crunch. And blood.

His room is too small to breathe in, and he opens the window and lets in the chill.

At eleven PM, a car drives by very slowly. It doesn't stop, but he recognises the rumble of Zeke's GTO. Casey goes to bed with the window open, but he can't sleep.

At midnight, he gets up again. His door doesn't really lock properly - the lock is twisted somehow, and he can get it open if he pokes at it with a ruler. Maybe they'll invest in a proper dungeon door if he starts getting into a lot of trouble.

They're already asleep like the hardworking people they are, lying like two logs on their backs, with two feet of cold space between them. Their faces are slack and lifeless and if he couldn't see their chests moving and hear his father's snores, he'd think they were dead.

*

Zeke always moves in his sleep, twitches and creeps closer, rolls away, pins Casey down with his body. Zeke's closer to Casey when he sleeps than he ever is when he's awake. Except when they're fucking, of course.

He tiptoes down the stairs and goes outside. He stands on the drive until Zeke's car drives by again.

"Hey," Zeke says when he's rolled down the window. Delilah is in the passenger seat, smoking. "You cool?"

"Yeah," Casey says. "Grounded for life, I think."

"Want me to kill them for you?"

"Yeah," Casey says. The thought makes him smile a little, and Delilah giggles and blows smoke at Zeke. "Your parents ever ground you?"

"Nah," Zeke says. "They practice the school of the cold shoulder."

"Did it work?"

"No."

"I'm gonna ground my mother one day," Delilah mutters, but she gets out of the car and comes around to put her arms around Casey and kiss him. Her face is warm against Casey's chilled skin and her mouth tastes like sex and cigarettes. She nips his lip and says, "Wanna go?"

He thinks about it. "No," he says. "They'll just _really_ ground me for life."

He kisses Zeke, too, leans down and catches his mouth, and Zeke doesn't even seem surprised. _A right, not just a privilege_, Casey thinks.

*

Still, he doesn't sleep very well, and he dreams strange dreams about fighting caribou; their horns clicking together like the branches of falling trees; and wide, bare plains.


	9. Freeze

"I've talked to Principal Drake, Casey," his father says. He's leaning against the doorjamb. Casey's sitting on his bed. He's been doing that a lot; just sitting and thinking. His father confiscated his camera, his modem, his stereo, his phone and his porn. He hasn't had TV privileges either, but watching TV with his parents has never really appealed to him, anyway. He's stopped writing things in his journal. He doesn't want to leave anything behind. He's been deleting things from his hard drive. He doesn't need help with the memories. They're all archived and locked away in his head.

His father moves restlessly. _He really doesn't want to talk to me_, Casey thinks. Casey doesn't want to talk to his father, either.

"You're going back to school on Monday, but they'll be keeping an eye on you. You'll be seeing Miss Burke twice a week for talks."

"Miss Burke?"

"Apparently she's standing in for Mrs Clark this year."

Casey's seen Mrs Clark a few times. The "counselling" mostly consisted of Mrs Clark telling him he needed to engross himself in his studies more, which was ridiculous since he was already pulling straight As. He had to remind her who he was every time he showed up.

"Okay," he says. Miss Burke can't be worse than Mrs Clark, and as long as no one _really_ listens, it'll be okay.

"We don't want anymore outbursts like that. I think we're damned lucky that boy's parents didn't sue."

Casey stares at his pictures of Delilah. One of the pictures is of Zeke and Delilah energetically ignoring each other in the cafeteria. He doesn't think his parents realise that the picture is less about Delilah than about Zeke's careless pose and the way the light hits his broad cheekbones and the angle of his jaw and his mouth.

"I'm just not going to ask you what you were thinking. I wouldn't have thought you'd be someone to completely throw away your chances."

"My chances at _what_?"

"Getting into fights with people you should be friends with." His father makes an abortive gesture, something to describe his sense of helpless confusion at his son's attitude problem, probably. "Principal Drake told me Zeke is repeating his senior year. Your mother and I have discussed this. Obviously, he's been putting thoughts in your head."

"You know, Dad, my head is pretty capable of producing its own thoughts--" And now he's thinking about Zeke - about Zeke's hands between his legs, Zeke's long fingers; thinking about Zeke fucking him while his dad is talking at him, it feels good. Thinking about Delilah - about Delilah's mouth, her tongue, her taste. "--I've been thinking for quite--"

"I don't think you need to spend any more time with Zeke."

"Gabe started that--"

"You're still grounded, of course."

"Dad--"

"If the talks with Miss Burke don't help," his father says, in the same wearily annoyed voice he's been using all along - as if he's suddenly too tired to invest in anger anymore, "--we are prepared to look for outside help."

"Dad."

"What?" He's looking past Casey. Out the window; maybe seeing before him some sort of ideal son - maybe someone like Gabe. Captain of the team.

"Nothing," Casey says. It seems to be the end of the conversation. It's the end of every conversation he has with his father.

"Do your homework."

Casey doesn't even bother to tell him that he's done the homework, he's done next week's homework, he's basically memorised the next five chapters of the history textbook.

*

"Are you unhappy, Casey?" his mother says. She's standing in the door, not leaning, but nervously plucking at her cardigan.

"No," Casey says. He's not even sure he's lying. He knows 'unhappy'. That's when it's almost better to get beat up in school than to be entirely ignored.

"You know we worry about you, honey."

"Yes," Casey says. His mother hesitates before she hugs him; he can feel it - she's tense and her movements are jerky. _Thanks, mom_, he thinks.

*

The phone rings just after dinner, and he goes to answer it. It's Zeke, and Casey wonders why he hasn't noticed before that Zeke's voice soothes him like a hit of Valium. He listens and his body is warm and sleepy. All through dinner, he's been jittery and about to start throwing things.

"They gonna let you out any time soon?" Zeke says.

"Nope," Casey says. Zeke's voice is deep and sort of husky. Cigarettes and coffee and sex. Casey closes his eyes and pretends he can walk out the door whenever he wants.

"Fuckers. Okay, same bat time, same bat channel." There's a pause. "Pretend I didn't phrase it like that."

"Dork," Casey says and hangs up just as his father wakes from his post-dinner stupor and comes to forcibly end the call.

"You have no phone privileges, son."

"I know," Casey says and flees upstairs.

*

The bat time is one AM, and Zeke actually parks in the drive. At least he doesn't try to climb up to Casey's window.

Casey doesn't think he'd kill himself over Zeke, but he couldn't _swear_ on that.

Zeke has the door open. He's changed the old Alice Cooper tape to something Casey doesn't recognise; jazz, soft and mournful. Zeke catches him by the arm, roughly, and pulls him in. Casey stumbles into the car, falls onto Zeke and Zeke mumbles "c'mere," and somehow they both fit in the passenger seat. Casey's left knee bangs against something hard and his right foot skids on the asphalt outside.

"We're still in the drive," Casey points out. It doesn't seem very important, though.

"Whatever," Zeke says and yanks his fly open. There's no space for anything but rubbing against each other, but Zeke puts his hands on Casey's throat, digs his fingers in, sucks on his collarbone, and Casey pants and almost dislocates his hip trying to get a better angle.

After, Zeke keeps a hand around his throat and looks at him thoughtfully. Casey swallows with some difficulty and tries to catch his breath. He's a little light-headed.

Zeke lets him go and he falls forward, buries his face in the crook of Zeke's neck. Whispers, "Missed you," under his breath, mostly just to feel the words in his mouth. Zeke strokes his back gently. "I'm back in school on Monday," Casey says out loud.

"Good," Zeke says. "Just watch out for Gabe and his merry men. They've been looking a little cranky lately. Can't imagine why."

"I'm not afraid of Gabe," Casey says.

*

"Not afraid of anything anymore, are you?"

He doesn't answer, just leans against Zeke and feels his body try to relax around him. His ribs are still sore, his throat feels raw and there's some sort of undefined pain deep in the pit of his stomach. Nerves, probably. Emotions happen in the stomach.

"Tomorrow," Zeke says before he leaves, and Casey stands in the yard for a while and lets the heat seep from his body into the night. He's freezing when he goes to bed.

*

Miss Burke wears a spectacularly ugly mustard cardigan and smiles nervously at Casey. "Hi, Casey," she says. Casey sits down and tries not to look at her clothes.

"You know why you're here, don't you?"

"Yeah," he mutters. She pushes up her glasses and smiles again.

"You haven't been in this kind of trouble before. Casey," she says. She adds his name, almost as an afterthought - _Point 3: Use Patient's Given Name Often To Ensure A Feeling Of Personal Contact._ "Would you like to tell me what brought it on?"

"It was a fight," he says.

"Gabe and...several other boys say you attacked him out of the blue."

"I'm sorry," Casey says. Apologising sometimes works. Accepting blame, sorry, sorry, mea culpa, won't happen again, sir, can I go now? What can they do if you bow your head and take it.

"Why are you sorry?" she says, and he looks at her. She seems earnest. She's taken courses. She wants to help. If he told her everything, she'd be on the phone to the guys in the white coats in five seconds flat, no doubt. When he got to school this morning - his father dropped him off, told him in no uncertain terms to get home immediately after class - he saw Delilah with Gabe's arm around her waist, and he didn't know if he wanted to slap her or Gabe, but he ended up thinking about the soft places on her body and the look on her face when she comes.

"I just am." He couldn't be less sorry if he tried.

"Why did you attack Gabe?"

"I don't know--" He changes his mind. "It was about a girl."

She blinks. He's surprised her, and he almost smiles.

"His girlfriend," he goes on. "Delilah."

Now she smiles again. Oh, everyone knows. Even Miss Burke. "She's very pretty," she says. "You like her a lot, huh?"

"She's very pretty."

"Were you angry with Gabe because...he goes out with her and not you?"

She probably doesn't realise what she just said. Casey tries to picture himself on a date with Gabe. He presses his hands against his mouth to keep the laughter in; it probably looks like he's overcome with emotion. Regrets, I've had a few... She's right, though. Right in that utterly wrong way.

"I just...got really pissed off. I don't like Gabe."

"That doesn't make it okay to break his nose, Casey. And you bit him. Three stitches."

He bites his tongue, but still he can't stop. "It makes it okay for him to trip me in the cafeteria, it makes it okay for him to put my head in a toilet, it makes it okay for him to slam my head against a locker." She stares at him, but he doesn't see shock, just pity. "I'm sorry," he says. He can't trust her. She has his student record, a little pad she makes notes on, probably a row of little checkboxes to tick off - and he doesn't think he can explain so she'd understand.

"It's okay to be angry, Casey," she says. "But you can't...Is it that bad? You've never complained before."

He's always felt a little sorry for Miss Burke. Students jerk her around. Zeke, especially. Zeke can make her cry in three minutes flat if he puts his mind to it. He seems to like it. In hindsight, Casey's not at all surprised.

It's okay to be angry. He's not angry right now, though, just tired, and he wants to leave but he has another twenty minutes with her. He catches himself staring at her cardigan again. His eyes hurt.

"Casey?"

"We just got into a fight, Miss Burke. I'm sorry I hit him so hard. I kinda lost it."

"Do you find you 'lose it' often?" His head's starting to ache, too. The room is oddly both too bright and too murky - sharp sunlight creeps in through the blinds, but doesn't light up the room.

"All the time," he says. "I'm the terror of the whole school."

She's gearing up to scold him for being uncooperative, he can see her shoulders tense. There's a knock on the door and she loses her steam.

"We're busy--" she starts, but the door opens anyway.

"Hi, Miss Burke," Zeke says, his voice lazy and deep. Casey keeps his back turned, makes his face hard so he won't crack into some big cheesy grin.

"Zeke, you can't-- You can't come in here--" She's suddenly flustered, after being carefully calm with Casey. Her eyelashes flutter and she's twisting her hands in her lap.

"I was just gonna ask if you were done with my buddy here. You done, Casey?"

"Zeke--" she says. "Zeke, you can't barge in like this. There are rules."

"Don't worry, I'll be out of here real fast. Wasn't even in here. Coming, Case?"

"Casey and I are having a conversation, Zeke."

"That's okay. I know what happened. Gabe didn't know Casey's grown balls lately. You should be talking to Gabe. Tell him not to fuck with nerds. They bite." Casey turns around and Zeke's leaning against the door, smiling blithely. It's a sweet smile - Zeke can produce those. Casey smiles back at him. He pushes away from the door and comes closer. Cocks his head thoughtfully. "Is that a new cardigan set you have there?"

She starts and looks down, blushes. "Why-- yes. But--"

"Very you, Miss Burke." He's directing all of his focus on her. He stands behind Casey's chair, ruffles Casey's hair with careless fingers. Miss Burke doesn't even notice. "Have you ever thought of wearing red? It would really bring out your skin tone."

"I think I have to go to class now, Miss Burke," Casey says quickly. Zeke's stroking the back of his head gently, and Casey has to concentrate to make sure he doesn't lean into the touch.

"Wh-- Yes. Yes, Casey. I'll see you again on--" She looks down and fumbles through her papers. Her cheeks are flushed. Zeke's fingers glide over Casey's pulse points, down to his collarbones. "Wednesday."

"Yes, Miss Burke."

*

Outside her door, Zeke pats Casey on the back and says, "Gotta scoot. Catch ya later," and he's gone. Casey goes to class and spends the day avoiding everyone.

It's not so bad.

*

On Tuesday, history class at the end of the day is cancelled. Casey has two hours to kill before he's expected home. He sits in the darkroom and cuts negatives. He has a roll of pictures of body parts. Zeke's fingers, Delilah's fingers, his own fingers. Zeke has long fingers, tidy fingers - he doesn't chew his nails. Delilah's are impeccably manicured. Casey's nails are worn ragged and his fingers are blunt and childish.

Eyes, mouths, ears. A breast in silhouette, the dark shadow of a head against a pale expanse of back. Casey thinks he'll have a pretty impressive portfolio by the time he gets out of this hellhole.

Delilah's voice outside: "Casey?"

"Yeah," he says and she comes in.

"I don't have long," she says. "I just needed to give you a heads-up. Gabe's on the warpath."

"Surprise," he says drolly. He has a picture of her legs in his hands. She has great legs. Thank you, cheerleading.

"No, I mean really on the warpath. I think he might, you know. He might suspect something. He's found his brain somewhere. Probably under a pile of helmets in the supply room."

"I'm not afraid of Gabe," Casey says, and he's still not lying.

"Don't be an idiot. Just because you had a shot of good luck doesn't mean you're not still a fucking lightweight."

*

"Fuck you, Delilah," he says and she reaches out and tangles her hands in his hair and tugs.

"You're all mouth now, aren't you? You'll be a wet spot on the fucking locker room floor if you don't watch out."

"Why don't you save the threats for someone who's listening," he mutters, but she's already kissing him and it doesn't matter.

"I'm going nuts with Gabe," she mumbles. "Jesus Christ, I want to tell him to shove it. Could you imagine his face if I told him the truth?"

"Yeah," Casey says. "If you told him about this--" She's sliding her hands under his shirt, he's pushing up her skirt.

She laughs breathlessly. "But we can't-- I can't."

"Some things are still more important, huh?" he says. "Like your reputation. Yeah, I know."

"It's not that--" She stops for a second. "Okay, it is that. This is sweet and all, but I've got a life, as opposed to some other people in this room."

He's never been anyone's distraction before, he thinks - not this kind of distraction. Is this a torrid love affair? It sounds more interesting like that. Sleeping with the team captain's girlfriend. It is interesting. She meant her words to hurt, maybe - a typical Delilah jab at a sensitive spot - but he's not hurt.

"I'm not gonna--" he starts, breaks off to gasp when she slides her hand inside his jeans. "I'm done being a punching bag."

She shrugs, exasperated, but he pushes his hips against her hand and she leans in again, her breath hot on his face.

*

Zeke doesn't knock or call out before he comes in. He just opens the door and says, "Knock it off, kids, or it'll be the Principal's office for you."

"This is a darkroom," Casey says. "You're supposed to knock."

"I like to surprise people." He leans against the counter. "Hot trysts in the high school darkroom. News at six. Come on, let's go."

"I'm still grounded," Casey says. "My dad will kill me."

Delilah says, "I've got plans, I can't go anywhere."

Zeke pulls Casey away from her, steers him towards the door. "You wanna live forever, Case?"

"No, but I was thinking I'd make it out of high school." He lets Zeke manhandle him; Zeke's careless fingers dig into his arms, and it's different from other people's manhandling. Zeke will hurt him and kiss the wound.

"I don't know why I have to do all the dirty work," Delilah says behind them.

"You're the girl," Zeke says. "This is a man's world."

"You can shove your man's world up your ass, Zeke," she says, but they walk out together, all three of them. Casey thinks - a slow, warm thought - _we've never walked around in school together before_.

Then he sees Gabe see them and remembers why. He melts back against the wall, automatically. His shoulders come up and his head bows down. He lets his body do this, and wonders how long it's been a built-in response. Maybe forever.

Gabe still has a broad swath of medical tape across his nose. Casey stares at the floor and thinks about the world of pain he'll be in if he laughs. World. Of. Pain. He chews on the inside of his mouth.

When he looks back up, Gabe's pulled Delilah aside and Zeke's vanished in the throng. Casey straightens his back and lifts his head and walks outside.

*

Someone yells something after him. Someone elbows him in the side when he steps through the front doors. Someone tries to trip him when he comes down the stairs. It's a gloomy day; barely above freezing, heavy drops trickling from the roof, the branches of the trees outside the school. He steps in a puddle and soaks his shoe. He hardly notices.

Zeke's by his car, talking to a couple of sophomore potheads. They sneer at Casey when they pass him. Zeke grins at him and says, "I just sold them a couple of dried shiitake laced with scat for thirty bucks."

Delilah's car is behind them when they peel out of the lot.

"She can't stay away," Casey says.

"It's the car," Zeke says.

"It's me."

"It's _me_," Zeke says and flips on the stereo. Alice is back and school's out forever.

*

After Zeke pulls into the drive they sit in the car, waiting for Delilah to catch up. Zeke stares at Casey.

"What?" Casey says.

"I'm admiring your hidden depths." Casey blinks and Zeke grabs his hand around the wrist and holds it up. "And your hands - wrists. I was thinking handcuffs. That'd be fun. Delilah in a strap-on. That'd put the spark back into our sex lives."

"It's lacking spark now?" Casey says, but he doesn't pull his hand back. Zeke's long fingers are curled around his thin wrist. He wants to take a picture. He could ask Delilah. With the right light, it could be great.

Zeke twists his hand quickly and Casey gasps and follows the movement. He feels his bones grind against each other. He ends up pressed against the dashboard. "You're just not afraid anymore."

"I'm not afraid," Casey says, and Zeke lets go, reels him in by his shirt collar and kisses him.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" he says. He rests his forehead against Casey's, lowers his voice to a deep whisper: "Really. Fucking. Good."

Casey wonders if there's some kind of lesson in this or if Zeke's just letting his brain go where it wants. It doesn't matter.

There's a knock on the window. Delilah shouts, "Would you two stop necking in the fucking front yard? You're not fourteen years old."

"I wasn't necking in the front yard when I was fourteen," Zeke says and gets out of the car.

 

There are no handcuffs or strap-ons, but Zeke is fascinated with his wrists, pins them above his head, twists his arms; he gets a distant look in his eyes when he's experimenting, and Casey shivers and leans back against Delilah. He's caught between them, walled in by skin and flesh and bone, and it occurs to him that he's seventeen years old and having sex with two people at the same time. Wouldn't have thought that when he was sixteen. Won't believe it when he's eighteen.

He comes, pinned on Zeke's cock, with Delilah's hands on his hips, and thinks, _it's not gonna end,_ but he can't see his eighteenth birthday, and he can't see outside this bubble.

*

Ten minutes later he passes by the kitchen on his way to the bathroom, and a woman with Zeke's eyes and Zeke's mouth looks up from a magazine and a cup of coffee to examine him with an expression of mild disgust.

He freezes where he is. Thankfully, he pulled on his jeans before he left Zeke's room, but he's shirtless and there's a lovebite on his collarbone that he can _feel_ in his skin. He must look like just-got-fucked with a neon sign on top. She stares coolly at him and he can't move.

"Are you done?" she says, and her voice is a husky alto; a phone sex voice. She looks younger than Casey's mother by years. She's beautiful.

"I-I was just--" he stammers. "Bathroom."

She goes back to her magazine without another word.

When he comes back from the bathroom, she's still sitting there. "Would you tell Zeke I'd like to talk to him," she says without looking up as he passes by.

"Okay," he says.

Zeke's in the door to his room, buttoning his jeans. "Uh, your--" Casey starts.

"I know," Zeke says stiffly and pushes past him.

*

"Hello, Zeke," Zeke's mother says when Zeke comes into the kitchen. Casey stays just outside. Delilah's behind him.

"Mom," Zeke says.

"Maybe your friends can go home now. I'll take you out to dinner and we can catch up a little." She doesn't smile. Zeke doesn't smile, but he's staring at her with a face that's gone completely still. Casey takes a step backwards.

Zeke relaxes minutely and pulls a hand through his hair. "I'll drive Casey home."

"I'll give him cab fare."

Casey can see Zeke's shoulders tense again. His mother crosses her legs. She's wearing a suit. The skirt is short and her legs are truly spectacular. Casey stares at Zeke instead. There's a long silence.

"Um," Casey says. "I can-- I'm ok--"

"I'll drive him," Delilah says quickly. She's nudging Casey in the side with sharp fingers.

"That's wonderful, thank you," Zeke's mother says. She doesn't sound like she thinks it's wonderful. She looks at Delilah with something that Casey can't translate into anything but contempt.

Zeke says, softly, "How are you?"

"I realise this is some sort of rebellion," she says, and her gaze runs sharply over Casey and Delilah and back to Zeke, "but I sometimes wish you'd picked up an ounce of class along the way."

Zeke doesn't look at them when they leave. He's standing in the middle of the kitchen, still and straight-backed. His hands hang by his sides, but his fingers twitch restlessly. His mother sits, impassive. It looks like a staring contest. Casey doesn't think Zeke's going to win this one.

"She's a classy bitch," Delilah says in the car. There's a touch of awe in her voice.

"She hates him," Casey says. He hugs himself - it's a cold day and the post-sex slow heat has leached out of his body and he just feels tired and worn now.

"Well, _duh_."

*

Zeke's not in school the next day. Casey tries very hard not to mope around like a lovesick freshman chick, but it's not really working. Delilah ignores him and smiles at Gabe, chatters with her friends, except for one breathlessly quick grope in the middle of the throng of people in the hall, when someone pushes Casey up against her and her hand comes down and slides along the edge of his jeans, her sharp nails leaving a thin, hot line along his skin.

At home, he's still locked in his room. He jerks off three times a day without the benefit of porn. He's not talking to his parents, but he's not sure they've noticed.

"I hope you're feeling better," his mother says.

"I don't care how he feels, there will be no more trouble," his father says.

"George," his mother says.

"I'm not kidding, Eliza. You have to be firm with an only child."

"You were the one who didn't want another."

Casey goes back to his room without finishing his dinner.

He sits on the doorstep for a while around midnight, but neither Zeke nor Delilah shows up. It seems to be getting colder. Maybe there'll be snow for Thanksgiving.

*

It's not snowing the next morning, but it's frozen over, and the icy puddles crackle under his feet on the schoolyard. Still no Zeke.

Miss Burke smiles a wavery smile at him and asks him how he feels.

The heating in her little office is on the fritz, so he wraps his arms around himself and says, "Cold."

"No, no, Casey," she says and her face crumples as if she's honestly sad about it. "You'll have to-- we have to work together. To make things-- To make things right."

"I really am cold," he says.

She takes off her glasses halfway through their fifty minutes, and he looks at her face to have something to look at. She's pretty, really. He wonders what happened to her to make her walk stooped and hug her books to her chest like she's hiding from the world. He tries to picture Gabe pushing her head into a toilet bowl. It's surprisingly easy.

"Who are your friends?" she asks.

He opens his mouth to answer, but he manages to keep it inside. "I don't have any," he says.

"How about-- How about Zeke?" she says, carefully. She's afraid of Zeke; it's interesting. More afraid than Casey ever was, probably. "He came by to. Get you?"

"He's not my friend," Casey says stupidly. Stupidly, because of course she picks up on that.

"Why do you say that? What is he?"

"He's." He stares at a sullen patch of light on the desk and tries to think. "He's."

She looks worried now; she's frowning and him, putting her glasses back on. "Is there something?" she asks, almost a whisper. "Do you need to--? Please tell me if there's some sort of. Trouble."

"No!" He almost shouted, he realises, and could he possibly be acting more suspicious? He might as well pull off his shirt and show her the bruises. But he's stuck on the thought - he can't say what Zeke is. Lover, not really; boyfriend, not really; best friend, he doesn't dare think that. What then?

"We just hang out. Sometimes."

"Zeke's-- I'm not sure he's. I don't like to say this, but I'm not sure you can trust him." She's making a little face; she's probably arguing ethics with herself. Casey can't stop a scared little laugh from bubbling up.

"I know," he says and the bell rings and school's out. "Bye, Miss Burke."

*

Outside her office, he leans his back against the wall and shoves his trembling hands deep into his pockets and closes his eyes. His skin is crawling. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," he mutters.

Someone's slaps him over the head - could be mistaken for a playful jab, but it's hard enough to hurt.

He opens his eyes in time to see half the football team parade past, and up front is Gabe, turning around to point at him and mouth something that might have been "I'll get you later."

Casey flips him off and turns to walk the other way. He sort of expects Gabe to run after him and pound him into a wet spot on the floor; it's almost a disappointment when that doesn't happen. Maybe things really have changed.

*

Zeke's not in school on Friday, either. Casey chews on his nails and tells himself to stop being an asshole.

Delilah's not forthcoming. "Can't talk now," she says, almost nervously. "Not here."

"But--"

"Jesus Christ, you're such a wuss. Call him or something." She leans closer and turns his face up with her hand around his jaw, like his mother would when he'd been bad as a child. "And for God's sake stop pissing Gabe off."

"I'm not--"

"Gotta run, Case," she says, but she lingers a second, gentling her hand on his face. Then she's gone, off to meet Gabe, her friends, have her precious life. Casey's fingers sting and he tastes blood. He's bitten the nails down to the quick.

There's a pay phone in the cafeteria. He hangs around in the corner for ten full minutes before he finally takes a deep breath, uncurls his fingers from the tight fists he's kept them in and picks up the phone.

*

He knows Zeke's number by heart, even though he's only called it a few times.

The voice that says "Yes?" is not Zeke's. It's cool and female and already familiar. Casey swallows and whispers, "Sorry, wrong number," and hangs up.

*

He gets his stereo back for good behaviour, and listens to Funker Vogt until his father tells him to turn it down or lose the music again. "What the heck is wrong with The Beatles?"

"I don't have any Beatles," Casey says and switches to the Starwars original score.

Half an hour later, there's a new knock on the door and he turns the stereo off entirely. "Okay, okay," he mutters, and the door opens and Delilah lets herself in.

"Okay what?" she says. "I have half an hour, so let's be quick."

He must have looked puzzled enough, because she adds, "You're still in solitary, but I bullshitted something about a history project."

"How many history projects do you think we can have this year?"

"Shut up," she says and pushes him down on the bed. "Fucking Zeke. He's fucking with your little head, isn't he?" She licks the side of his face and pushes up his shirt.

Casey lies back and watches her hair fall in a dark, glossy cascade over her face. "And you're not?"

"That's what you like about me," she says and pulls her t-shirt over her head. He doesn't think she really knows what he likes about her.

She bites his lip and pinches his nipple and pushes him into the bed with her body, and he's not really sure what it is he likes most.

*

"I think we need to stage an intervention," she says while she's putting her clothes back on. "Let's go over there and yank him out of his bullshit funk."

"He'll probably be doing stuff with his--"

"Not at midnight, he won't." She grins at him. "Kinda cloak and dagger. You should like it, geekboy."

*

She's leaving, tidied up and proper again, and he's flushed and damp and still trying to find his underwear. "Delilah--" he says. He's not sure what he wants to say. They never really talk. He never really knows - everything is just guesswork and hunches and tingles down his spine. He'd like to ask her things, if he could only think of a way to put anything into words. _Are you really mine?_ for example. It just doesn't say what he wants to say.

He must have said it out loud, whispered it, because she smiles crookedly and says, "You're mine, stupid."

*

"Tell us if you need to have someone over for school," his mother says later. "It'll be easier that way."

"Yeah, Mom. I'll ask her to call and make an appointment next time."

"None of that, son," his father says, but he sounds a little tired; not up to his usual cranky force. "I am getting sick and tired of your attitude."

"You _wanted_ me to buck up!" Casey blurts, exasperated. Sick and tired, really? "I bucked up and now I'm fucking grounded."

*

Then he's also locked in his room, of course, but at least he gets some peace and quiet. He thinks about Zeke's mother who can't stand her son. Zeke who stares at his mother and tries to hide something. Casey's never really given Zeke's parents much thought before. Zeke doesn't talk much about them, only mentions them in passing, and Zeke's never been much for sharing anyway. Casey is pretty sure his parents love him, in some distant, confused way. They're not trying very hard, though, he thinks. He also thinks he might hate them, in a much less distant way.

He thanks them for their absent-mindedness, though, when he wiggles the lock open and slips into the hallway. Absent-minded and trusting, he supposed. If they're so sure he's disturbed, it's surprising that they can sleep so soundly. He could burn down the house around them and they'd never know.

 

Delilah's waiting in her car, tapping her fingers on the wheel. She doesn't smoke inside her own car, only in Zeke's. Casey doesn't think she smokes at all when she's living her real life. Smoking is a part of this secret, like Casey and Zeke and fucking in moving cars.

She smiles quickly at Casey when he gets in the passenger seat. He smiles back.


	10. Melt

When Zeke was ten years old, he broke his neck and spent six months in a cast. Sometimes - not often anymore, but sometimes - he wakes up from nightmares where he's caught in plaster, fixed immobile and helpless, pins and screws, and staring up at his mother's face.

Wednesday morning, he lies in bed, cold and damp with scared sweat and tries to talk himself down from the chilly rush. He can hear his mother moving around in the kitchen, putting on coffee, opening a newspaper, turning on the radio. Everything else is too quiet. He can hardly hear his own breathing, even though it's still coming in short pants.

He moves his head carefully, rolls it on his neck - the neck that hasn't been stiff and sore in years and isn't hurting now. When he first opened his eyes, he was sure his mother _was_ in the room, standing by his bed and looking down at him. He sleeps naked, always, and the blanket is somewhere on the floor. He woke up and froze, and didn't move until he was sure she was a figment of his imagination.

He gets up and walks, still naked, to the bathroom. He lives here. She doesn't. She doesn't look up from the paper.

He takes a shower and jerks off. Thinks about Casey, Delilah, their skin and their mouths. If he wanted to rebel, he would've had three large drug dealing gangbangers in his bedroom. She should know that by now.

"I see you're still doing business in school," she says when he walks back towards his room. He stops in the kitchen door. She's already dressed and made up. Her hair shows no grey. Her mouth is still full. Her hands are perfectly manicured, but he thinks he can see signs of ageing there.

"I have to do something," he says. She taps a finger on the tabletop and sips her coffee.

"Do get dressed," she says and turns away.

 

"I suppose you're not going to school," she says later. "I'll take you to Vincent's."

He hates Italian food, ever since they spent a summer in Verona after he got out of hospital and he was sick almost every day. He doesn't think she's forgotten that. She might have, of course, but he thinks she's like him that way; she notices things and uses them.

She kisses Vincent on the cheek and they catch up while Zeke chain-smokes to block out the stench of garlic and olive oil.

She smokes after she's eaten, slim French cigarettes. She looks like she should have a mouthpiece for them. She's plucked her eyebrows to thin, delicate arches. He remembers her eyebrows from her bohemian phase; they were thick and almost met over her nose.

"Is there anything you need?" she asks.

"No," he says, although he can think of a few things. For her to be gone, for example. Her blouse is low-cut. She's always toed the line between slut and stylishly sexy, always stayed clear on the conservative side. She's well bred.

"Any trouble in school?"

This would probably be what passes for parenting. "Nope," he says. "I'll flunk history again, no problem."

She smiles. Her mouth is beautiful, but her smiles always look reluctant. "You still think you're Peter Pan, Zeke."

"I can't fly," he says.

"Pity," she says. She probably wishes he'd tried to fly instead of encouraging other people to try for him. If he'd been the one who died, she could have gone on with her life.

Not that she hasn't. "How long are you staying?" he asks and lights another cigarette.

"I'm meeting Alice and Bruno in Santa Cruz Friday night. My flight leaves at noon."

She smokes and looks out the window. He studies her profile, which is more delicate than his; female, but so obviously kin. She turns her head and catches him staring, but they've been playing this game for a while and he won't let her intimidate him. "Where did you pick up those two hapless children yesterday?" she asks finally and stubs out her cigarette.

"School," he says. He has a strange impulse to defend Casey and Delilah, but it's not hard to curb. After all, they _are_ hapless children. He really can't wait to hear all she has to say about Delilah's obvious upper class bad girl shtick and Casey's entire scrawny, downtrodden existence. Zeke's mother would have caught enough about them in a few glances to figure out a few likely weak spots. Zeke would have.

"You still like the younger boys, I see," she says, and just like that, he's cold, down at the bottom of his stomach. So cold it feels hot, melting hot. "Doesn't he remind you a little of-- I can't even remember his name anymore. But really, Zeke. I thought we put that behind us."

"That wasn't anything like this." Anyone else in the world - any fucking one, up to and including the Pope - would pay for talking to him like this. Maybe not immediately, but appropriately.

She purses her lips and smiles. "Did you even notice when we gave up on you?" she asks. She reaches over the table and touches his face and he flinches. He sets his jaw - he's not Casey. He's nothing _like_ Casey - and stills. She strokes his jaw with cool fingers, his mouth, his cheekbone. She looks almost regretful for a second. "I don't know when you gave up on us."

He could cry right now. He hasn't cried in years. Maybe not since they moved to Santa Cruz, nine years ago. Right now, though, with her hand on his face and her eyes softening, her dark voice gentle in his ears, he could.

He pushes her hand down. "Did I ever count on you, anyway?" He leaves her with the check. She has a real job.

He sort of saw this coming and took his own car, so he can slide in behind the wheel and feel at home immediately. He bought this car himself, with honest-to-God drug money he made a fairly memorable summer two years ago, cutting coke and peddling it to college kids up in Gambier.

He drives down to the lake. The water is still and looks oily in the pale sunlight. He still lets her play him. He's always just as amazed once he gets out of her immediate presence. That she can just reach in and _get_ him.

The sun's low in the sky and useless, and this place is one of the most grey and miserable spots in the entire state, anyway. He likes it, though; no one ever comes here. Great for a little downtime, especially on those rare occasions when his house is invaded by parents.

He thinks about Casey on the ground here, Casey going nuts and trying to run. It seems very long ago. He needs to stay away from Casey for a while now. Who knows what he might do. His mother always brings out the worst in him. She pushes him far closer to the edge than he'd ever allow himself to get pushed by anyone else. His mother is just like him.

She'll be gone soon. She'll be gone and he'll take a week to wipe his brain clean of her and then he'll have his comfortable little existence back.

He has a gun; he keeps in his car now. He doesn't want her to find it.

It's a Colt Cobra .38 special. Its usual place is on a shelf next to the TV. Zeke moved it one day to the coffee table, where it lay under a pile of magazines. Casey found it and made a face.

"It's my mom's gun," Zeke said into an issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. It was one of the endless afternoons when there was nothing to do but fuck and fuck and lie sweaty and spent on the sofa afterwards. Or dedicate some time to academic pursuits while his houseguests roamed free. "She bought it when my dad was in Zimbabwe for six months. I was ten." It had been right before he'd taken the car for a little spin in their neighbourhood in Santa Cruz and wrapped it around a telephone pole, but he didn't tell Casey that.

Casey stared at it, apparently fascinated. Zeke could almost see his hands twitching with conflicting urges. "Do you know how to use it?"

"Of course. I was a better shot than her when I was thirteen." He had a memory right then, one of those really bright ones, like a flashback. Holding the gun and his mother laughing at him and telling him to put it down or he'd shoot himself in the foot. Firing a round into the wall next to her. He wasn't sure it'd actually happened. Maybe he just wished it had. He would never hurt her.

Delilah picked up the gun when Casey seemed to have decided to let it be. "Is it loaded?"

"Yeah," Zeke said and pretended to go back to the article on interstitial cystitis in middle-aged women.

"Put it down," Casey said and Delilah made a face at him, but she put down the gun.

"Got anything better to do?"

"I can think of a few things," Zeke said before Casey had time to open his mouth.

"I wasn't asking you, lab rat."

"I can think of a few things," Casey said. Zeke was sure he could too, and Casey was bright-eyed and red-cheeked that day, almost happy, and Zeke put down his magazine and waited for them to come to him.

*

He spends an hour shooting at the branches of one of the gnarled and twisted willows by the water. His mother's not there when he gets home.

*

She finds the pictures on Thursday morning. He comes down to the basement and she's bent over the table, picking through them. Her hair is loose and falls over her shoulder; it touches the surface of the table. He holds a cup of coffee in his hand and almost drops it. The sickening crunch of déjà vu is the strongest he can remember ever feeling. She's a little taller, a little bonier than Delilah, but her pose is exactly the same and her hands on the pictures are red-nailed and predatory.

He turns away immediately, but she's heard him of course. "They're good pictures. Which one of them took them?"

He doesn't answer. He won't talk to her about this. He can't bring Casey here, not while she's here - even though he wants to. He doesn't like being prevented from doing what he wants to. That goes against everything he's built his life on. Her presence unsettles things. He can picture her ripping into Casey; there'd be nothing left.

"Why did you come here?" he asks to distract her.

"I wanted to see you," she says. "I'm your mother." Her smile is small and mirthless. She's looking at him, not at his face - her eyes slide lazily over his body. He never runs; if he were the type to turn tail, he'd be out the door, flying down the street by now.

"Yeah. Mom," he says and matches her stare, stares back, lingers on her chest and her legs. She straightens her back and says,

"Maybe we've had enough of a staring contest now. I'm going shopping." She passes him in the stairs and her perfume tickles his nose. "Did I scare your friends away?" she says.

He goes down to the lab and feeds his mice. The female is named Clarissa. He thinks about renaming it Katherine after her and dissecting it today. That might be a little more petty than he likes to allow himself, though. Too psych 101. Too conventional.

*

"Did you have a nice day?" she asks him when he comes back in at five. He's been driving. He almost kept going; the road ahead seemed full of promise, a long straight, clear path. Then he turned back and drove once past Casey's house and back home. There would always be another day to go.

"Yes," he says. She's sitting in the living room, listening to Duke Ellington and reading his copy of Slaughterhouse 5. She's been in his room, going through his books. He has a shelf of books he likes to have close by. He can see her standing in front of it, running her fingers over the tattered paperbacks, picking one out there, one out there. Probably pressing her lips together in contempt for his mundane taste. Vonnegut would be the only author of the lot she'd accept.

"I suppose we need to talk." She puts down the book and looks at him. "Since I'm leaving."

"I suppose we do," he says.

"Sit down." He sits down, in one of the easy chairs across from the sofa. "Your father is in São Paulo. I'd tell you he sends his love, but..."

"He doesn't."

"No," she says, and he can almost catch a little curl of her mouth. He wonders if she's getting less opaque or if he's getting better at reading her. "I don't think he'll be coming here for your graduation."

"I'm not going to graduate."

"Ah, yes. You're going to stay in high school all your life."

"I'm not in a hurry anywhere."

"The world isn't your oyster, Zeke. You're a teenage malcontent with nothing better to do than peddle drugs and play spin the bottle with your classmates and you think you have it all figured out?" She doesn't raise her voice at all; one thing that makes it so hard to argue with her. "You've really reached new heights of pathetic this year."

"So I guess I'm the asshole here, right? Don't make me blame you, mother."

She comes as close to unattractive as she ever does: her lips press together in a thin red gash and fine lines deepen on her face. "Oh, you already do," she says. "Hasn't everything you ever did been a cry for attention?"

"Don't try to analyse me--"

"I don't need to analyse you, Zeke. You think you're hiding anything?" She leans a little forward. "You had that oedipal complex when you were ten years old."

His hands lie still on his legs. Not the slightest twitch, no urge to knot them into fists and pound her face to a bloody pulp. He even tries to picture it, but he has to stop - her eyes would stop him. Her mouth would stop him. Her voice would stop him before he even raised his hand. He could growl "Don't fuck with me," but it would have no impact because she's playing this game so much better. And she knows it.

She raises an eyebrow. "Just don't take your frustrations out on your little friends, Zeke," she says and gets up. "I don't think I can keep you out of prison forever. I'm not sure I'd even bother this time. You're old enough to calculate the damage yourself. Now, I'm going to take a bath. Excuse me."

*

"Bitch," he says weakly after she's gone, but it doesn't fit her - it seems too small a word for her.

He takes the Vonnegut back to his room and lies on the bed flipping through the pages. He's written little squiggly comments in the margins here and there, random thoughts, references, quotes. He hates the thought of her reading his books; he stares at the pages and can almost see her fingerprints there, burned into the yellowing paper.

He unbuckles his jeans and slides his hand down to curl around his cock. If he's lying here thinking deep thoughts, he might as well jerk off. Same thing, really, and they go together well. Jerking off to an image of his mother in the bath feels like a punishment, but he's not sure who he's punishing. He stops before the rush hits, yanks his hand away and thinks, deliberately, about Casey's room - Casey alone there on his bed while his parents are busy ignoring him. Casey would sit curled up and he'd think about Zeke. Zeke can't imagine Casey thinks of much else. It's very easy to imagine Casey thinking about Zeke and touching himself, a little hesitantly because Casey does everything hesitantly unless someone's there to make him forget himself.

Maybe Casey thinks about Delilah and is less hesitant.

The drain in the bathroom gurgles and Zeke wraps his hand around his cock again and finishes off in three quick strokes.

*

He still has his hand down his pants when she pushes open his door and says, "Clean yourself up. I'm taking you out."

He sits up sharply and tries to button up his jeans without too much of a mess, although that's sort of a lost cause already. "You're what?" he says to distract her, but she's glancing at his crotch with a curt little smile.

"Unless you're otherwise occupied, of course. Are you missing the boy or the girl or both?"

He almost pulls his hand through his hair before he remembers that it's sticky. She must see his awkward gesture. She doesn't let on, though. "Come on, Mom. Where are we going?"

"You still call me 'Mom'," she says. "Isn't that sweet."

*

"Not that thing," she says when he heads for his car. "It's filthy."

His car is a little muddy from his earlier drive - it's raining, a chilly, insistent drizzle - but he washed it three days ago. "It's not filthy."

"Of course it is. You're nineteen. You've had sex with your little friends in that car." She smoothes a hand over her skirt. "This is a Vuitton. We're taking mine."

He's not used to being a passenger, and she drives infuriatingly slowly. He lights a cigarette and she reaches out and snatches it from his mouth and throws it out the window.

"Not in the car."

"Well, pull over then, I wanna smoke."

"Learn self-control."

She listens to the Adult Top 40 station, which he suspects is part of some psychological torture scheme she's using on him. She doesn't even like that kind of music.

The last time she was in town - in August, she stayed for two days. The time before that, a week during which she talked to him exactly three times.

"I met Steven in Columbus," she says suddenly, and he almost asks, "Who?" He hasn't seen his father in three years. "In Barney's. We're going to Barney's today. Not as a memory lane thing, of course, but it's the best jazz bar in Ohio."

*

"Never heard of it," he mutters. Celine Dion makes him grumpy, not smoking makes him grumpier, and his mother acting psycho makes him nervous. The rain is picking up.

"Of course not," she says, as if his ignorance is only expected. "You're turning into a small town dullard."

"Wasn't that the point?"

"No, the point was keeping you out of trouble. I think Steven actually said, 'Small town. What could _possibly_ happen?' Emphasis mine, of course."

"Of course."

"Are you actually having some sort of relationship with those two? I would not have pegged you for the type."

"The type to do what?"

"The girl, what was her name? She looked moderately presentable. Suburban teenage angst seeping through, of course, but she looked like she knew how to carry herself." She leans forward and squints out the window. By now, sheets of rain are pelting the window, covering it in snaking tendrils, turning the inside of the car into a reverse aquarium. The windshield vipers can't keep up. She slows down even more. "This weather. Why didn't we stay in California?"

"Because you put me in school in Ohio."

"California would have been too interesting for you."

_And you wanted to be rid of me_, he thinks. Ohio's been good to him. This was perhaps the best idea his parents ever had. He remembers California in short, vague flashes, but he was a different person then. He wasn't in control.

"The boy, though," she says. "Did I say he reminded me of Terrence? Terrence was his name, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," he says, but he can't remember what Terry looked like. Thinking about Casey _or_ Terry when his mother sits next to him feels dangerous.

"Not looks, of course - this one is much prettier. But his eyes...you like that, don't you? He worships you." By now they've almost slowed to a stop, and she turns to him, her eyes bright and sharp. "You always break your toys in the end, Zeke."

He could probably say, "This isn't like that," but she wouldn't believe him and he's not going to start explaining. But it isn't like that.

"When you were in Munich with Steven, Terrence's mother called me," she says.

He fishes out his cigs and lights one, avoids her hand and blows smoke at her.

"Are you trying to convince me that you're still fourteen?" she says.

"No," he says. "But if you're going to talk about my fucked up childhood, I'm going to smoke."

"Would you rather talk about the weather?" she asks him and speeds up a little. The rain is still coming down, but it looks a little thinner now. They can actually see the road.

"Yes," he says and stubs out the cig and finds a station that plays classic rock. She drops the subject, but he doesn't think she's forgotten about it. Maybe she's trying to lull him into a false sense of safety. Maybe she's feeling magnanimous. Maybe, just maybe, she's tired of yanking his chain.

 

He's been going to clubs since he was seventeen, ever since he grew tall and broad enough to pass for 21, but it feels strange to go with his mother. She holds his hand when they walk in and the bouncer's eyes slide over him without really seeing him.

He yanks his hand back as soon as they're inside and she leans closer to him and says, "Stop acting like a child."

"I am your child."

"Not in here."

He looks around. A whole clubful of people his mother's age, with a few pretty young things scattered between them - trophy wives and boytoys.

"You took me here to show me off to your friends?" he says, incredulous. She throws him an exasperated glance.

*

"Don't flatter yourself. I'm here for the music. You're here because we're spending quality time together." She actually wrinkles her nose at 'quality time'.

She gets them martinis. Gin makes him sick to his stomach, as a rule. If he ever drinks, which happens rarely these days, he drinks beer or vodka. "One of us has to drive home," he says.

"Not me," she says and sips. "I have no friends here," she adds. "I haven't been in this place since 1976."

"You're dating yourself."

"You had to come from somewhere. Although sometimes I wonder if they didn't switch you in the hospital. You were such a pretty little baby, but what we got home was quite different."

He wasn't an attractive child, or an attractive adolescent. Gawky and clumsy and his face had been too big for the rest of him, all chin and nose and eyebrows. He's grown up well, and she's told him that - "Thank God you didn't stay ugly," she said last time she was here, "At least you can get by on your looks," as if she'd entirely missed the fact that he has her brains and is using them - but when he was fourteen, he was skinny and too tall and graceless.

Sometimes, he'd catch her twisting her mouth in disgust at the sight of him. Now her eyes are on his face, studying him calmly. "Stephen going to stay in São Paulo until late May."

"Good for him." He's not sure why she's talking about his father. He suspects they may be divorced, but he's not sure.

"I look like you," he points out.

She waves at a waiter. "Yes, much to my dismay-- We'd like to eat."

There's thankfully no Italian food on the menu, and he orders ribs. She makes a face and asks for the house salad and another martini.

"You can have mine," he says.

"I think you'll need it. Now, tell me about your friends."

"I don't think my friends are any of your business, Mom."

"I'm just trying to make conversation, honey. I've thought about this. The girl could be something. A touch of class. The boy worries me."

"I guess you're gonna tell me why."

"You don't need that kind of thing right now. You're not in a position to indulge in your deviancy yet."

He blinks. "My _deviancy_?"

"Did you learn nothing in Santa Cruz?"

"Yes, I did, actually." He finally gives up and drinks. The shock of alcohol is a good distraction. "I learned not to trust you."

She leans forward over the table. He leans towards her before he even realises what he's doing. "You were a mess, you were an amateur fumbling at a very adult game, and you fucked it up. I don't think it's time for you to start slipping into that again."

He sits back, quickly. Her eyes are too close, too intense. "I was fourteen years old," he says. "I wasn't playing a game, I was living my life."

She laughs and finishes her drink. "That's not what Terrence's mother said. Were you fucking him?" He's not used to obscenities out of her mouth, and they jar. There's a trickle of ice creeping down his spin. "She didn't know about that, but I always wondered. You're fucking Casey, right? How about little Terry?"

She's already upping the ante. He has no idea why he let her drag him here. She's going to push him and push him for her amusement, and he's probably going to let her.

He slouches back in his chair and takes another sip of the martini - it's already easier to drink. "Do you think about me fucking a lot, Mom?" he asks.

"Oh, you're in," she says, smugly. "I do. Your attempts at a social life intrigue me. Quite a little party team you have for yourself now."

"Does it bother you?"

"I only want what's best for you," she says with a completely straight face. The fucking gin is starting to look like a really good idea. He's not going to win any ground with her, sober _or_ drunk, so he might as well be comfortably numb. "Did you ever think about college?" she adds out of the blue.

"What?"

"Before you decided to thumb your nose at us at the expense of your own life, I mean."

"I'm fine, thanks."

"You could still pick yourself out of the gutter. You think you can go on like this forever? You'll be on the streets in a year."

The band plays classic jazz, the kind his mother likes. Benny Goodman, The Duke, Bird. The woman singing has a slow, warm voice and a tight dress. Zeke watches her instead of his mother for a while. Their food arrives, more martinis for her, a beer for him and silence between them as they eat. The singer moves slowly and holds the microphone like a lover. Zeke thinks about Casey and Delilah. He likes watching them kiss. Casey has a habit of simply lying back and letting himself be kissed, utterly passive; Delilah will grab his head and dive in, biting his lips and licking the sore spot. Casey's hands will scrabble helplessly over her back.

_I'm gonna get myself a shotgun..._

"I have a loft on the Upper East Side."

_Twice as long as I am tall..._

His mother's voice is deep and husky, but never warm. "You could take the SATs again. You could be a person rather than some small town loser with a junk habit and a fast track ticket to Oakwood. New York would give you plenty of opportunities."

_I'm gonna shoot that man..._

His own voice is scratchy. "I don't have a junk habit."

"You will." Her hand on his, suddenly, and he turns away from the singer. His mother has finished his martini, too, and her eyes are just a little glazed. "Stephen probably isn't coming back from Brazil, Zeke. Maybe we've been approaching this whole thing the wrong way, all along."

"What thing?" he asks. His palm is sweaty against the tabletop. He wants to smoke. Her hand is dry and cool; he can feel her nails lie sharp against his skin, potential danger at rest, like a cat's sheathed claws. Her hands are larger than Casey's.

"You. You were a disturbed child. You scared us. We may have overreacted."

She's throwing him some sort of line. He didn't expect this. Her hand has trapped his - how can that happen? He has big hands. He can fold Casey's hand or Delilah's hand entirely into his. He can twist a quarterback's arm and make him cry uncle. His mother's hand is light and bony, and when her fingers slide around his wrist, he can almost hear the click of a handcuff locking.

"You're an adult now, Zeke," she says, almost sweetly, and so softly that he has to lean in, has to stay inclined towards her. Her lips forming the words fascinate him. "You can do whatever you want."

"I am doing what I want," he says. The table between them is too narrow; she's too close. He might not be able to walk away. She smiles.

"You're miserable. You've always been miserable. Too smart to fit in, too ruthless to be loved, too scared to leave."

"I am--" _Loved_. He freezes. The music is a screech of disharmony in the background. Her face is calm and her voice has spun a cloud around him and he's afraid of her. "I'm not afraid," he lies and thinks, _this is how Casey feels. _He has no desire to ever feel like Casey.

She laughs, keeping it low and throaty and for his ears only. "I don't think you know how scared you are." She lifts her hand off his and puts it on his face instead. He bows his head and she strokes his cheek softly. "Maybe you've been afraid too long to even notice."

He shivers under her touch and can't move.

"It's a beautiful loft," she whispers. "Hardwood floors and brick walls. I did the interior design myself."

He knows she's lying - not in words perhaps, but in intentions, and still he can feel himself slipping. She's never really asked anything of him before. There has to be a reason for this. She hates him. She _hates _him. Her fingertips touch his mouth and there's a heaviness in his body, a heat and a weight in his limbs.

He's seduced people like this.

"Tell me something, Mom," he says. Her nail scratches his lower lip lightly when he speaks. "How many beds in your loft?"

He leans back and she lets her hand drop to the table. "I have a sofa," she says smoothly.

"Fuck off, Mom," he says and it doesn't even feel good. He wants another fucking martini. For the first time in ages, he would not say no to some chemical entertainment.

He knots his hands into fists and concentrates on the sliver of pain where his nails dig into his palms. She lights a cigarette and smiles at him. "It's time for you to get out of Ohio, honey."

He finds a spot on her blouse to focus on and says, "I like Ohio."

Her turn to freeze. He can see the realisation dawn in her eyes, and this should feel good too, but it doesn't.

"What do you have here? Nothing. Your little tramp and your little toy, a school you don't go to, an empty house."

He's unfrozen entirely now that she's slipped back from seductive to vicious. She's a little drunk, he thinks; not quite up to her game. He might be, too. "Better than you. Hitting on your son? Are you lonely, Mom?"

For a fraction of a second, he can see that he has her; he's hit her in the one single soft spot she has. Then her expression smoothes out and she says, "As you wish. The house is yours. I'll send someone to collect my personal effects."

It still hurts. How can it hurt? "Yeah, fine. Whatever."

*

She drinks a few more martinis and he smokes and listens to the band. They leave at midnight and Zeke drives. It's stopped raining and the world is star-bright and glistening wet.

"I didn't even want children," she mutters. She's more than a little drunk now and she's given up on her no-smoking-in-the-car rule.

"Shouldn't disowning me be enough, Mom?" he asks. "Need to hammer it in just a little more, huh?"

"But you were beautiful - you had a thick head of curly black hair and your little hands were the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen. I cried with joy when I got to see you in the hospital."

"Mom..."

"We had a little room made up - at first we were in San Francisco and didn't have the space, but after we moved into your grandmother's old house we made you a room with stars in the ceiling."

"Look, this is great, memory lane, great, but seriously, I have no--"

"We had a dog named Burt. Did I ever show you pictures? That dog loved you."

He pulls over to the side of the road so quickly the tires screech. She catches herself against the dashboard. He turns to her. "Shut the FUCK UP, MOM."

He can't hit her. He wants to. Oh, he wants to. Instead, he hits the dashboard, hits the radio so the knobs come loose and skitter to the floor, hits the heating system controls. He realises he's losing it. She's pressed against the window on her side and he has a quick, sickening flash of Casey, Casey's face beat bloody, Casey's eyes staring at his fists.

His mother touches his hand and stops the next punch with cool fingers. "Stop it, Zeke," she says. "You're throwing a tantrum. Listen to me. You played in the yard with your Tonka truck. You never hurt animals, I never caught you pulling the wings off flies."

He leans his face against the wheel and listens. His hand throbs. She's stroking his cracked knuckles. "On your first day in school, you got into a fight with a third grader. You beat his head against a wall and they told us to get you therapy.

"I didn't know what happened to my beautiful baby.

"I remembered why I didn't want children.

"The day you broke your neck; when I saw you fall--"

He's still leaning into her touch. "--I was happy. I thought you'd die."

*

He wants to sleep through her leaving, but instead he stands in the door and watches her load her suitcase into the back of the Saturn. She shows no signs of a hangover. Zeke has a headache and the morning sun is too bright in his eyes.

They haven't spoken at all since last night, and he's not about to start a conversation. Her dress and make up are perfect. Sometimes he thinks he sees a little smile on her face; sometimes it looks like she's just tightening her mouth in disapproval. Or pain, although that might be too much to hope for.

"Goodbye," she says and leans in and kisses the corner of his mouth. He waits until after she's gone to rub his face to get rid of imprint of her lips.

He goes back inside.


	11. Burn

Casey pulls his feet up onto the seat. Delilah almost snaps at him to get his filthy shoes off the upholstery. He's hugging his knees, nervous, as if her mood directs his.

"Sometimes I think I should just go," he mumbles. "Like, it'd be cool - I'd live in a cabin somewhere in Canada, way up north. Up where there's a midnight sun and a hundred miles to the nearest neighbour."

"Yeah, just you and a bunch of Eskimos," she says. "That'd be awesome. You should lay off the glue, Case. You'd go nuts in a week."

"No," he says, turning to her, his face set. "_You'd_ go nuts in a week. I don't much like people."

For about two seconds, it actually sounds like a pretty good idea. No one to think about but herself; Casey and Zeke and herself and a hundred square miles of emptiness and wildlife. Then she comes to her senses and thinks, _emptiness, wildlife and no shopping._

"It's too cold up there," she says. "And boring. How about Mexico?"

"Too many Mexicans."

"What's wrong with Mexicans? How are they worse than moose and Eskimos?"

"There are just too many of them. I want to be alone." He rubs his face. "I'm cold."

She's cold too, but not because of the temperature in the car. She has what people in horror movies call 'a bad feeling'. It's been growing in her stomach like some kind of malignant tumour. "Not to be melodramatic," she says, "but when I said 'staging an intervention', I really meant it."

"Zeke can take care of himself," Casey says and he almost sounds like he's reciting gospel. "Since when did you start caring about him, anyway?"

"This might come as a surprise to you, but I do care."

He snorts and says nothing.

*

Zeke's house is dark and silent. There's no sign of his mother's silver Saturn. Zeke's car stands alone in the yard.

"You think she left?" Casey asks. He slides his fingertips over the wet metal of the GTO's hood in a way that makes Delilah want to push him down on it and crawl on top of him.

"Or they're out making the town unsafe for everyone even remotely sane," she says instead, and tows him along by the sleeve.

"This would be cooler if there was a full moon."

She stops and stares at him. "You're just stuck inside some spy novel universe in your head, aren't you?"

"Fuck you," he mutters.

She unlocks the door and they slip into the dark hall. "One day," she whispers in his ear, "I will wake up from this fucked up dream and ask myself why I have a spare key to Zeke Tyler's house."

"But not tonight," Casey says and takes her hand. His fingers are cold and a little clammy.

Delilah flicks on the light in the hall. Kitchen, empty. Zeke's room, empty. Bathroom, empty. Casey runs downstairs and comes back, shaking his head. Living room, empty.

"Maybe they really are out," he says.

Delilah stands in the hall and smells cigarette smoke. She hasn't smoked today, and this is fresh, anyway. "Plot thickens," she murmurs. Casey's next to her, twitchy and wide-eyed.

"This is kinda freaking me out," he says.

"No shit."

*

Zeke is lying on the bed in the master bedroom, wearing boxers and nothing else, smoking and staring at the ceiling. He's been there a while; there's a heap of butts next to him. He hasn't used an ashtray, just stubbed them out on the beige silk bedspread.

"Zeke!" Casey gasps behind Delilah. He sounds a lot like the heroine of some fifties movie, breathlessly scandalised. Delilah would laugh, but she's too busy trying to put two and two together.

Zeke's ignoring them. Delilah catches herself automatically scanning the room for empty bottles. There are none, though. The room is tidy and clean.

"Did your mom leave?" Casey asks softly.

"She's gone," Zeke says, and if Delilah didn't know better, she'd say he was drunk out of his gourd.

Casey's staring at Zeke in something like abject horror. He's probably suffering from cognitive dissonance, poor baby.

She takes a step towards the bed. "So, by 'gone' you do mean 'has left town by way of Highway 62'? Not, say, 'has expired as a result of blunt trauma to the head and is currently stowed in the laundry closet'?"

"Go home, Delilah," Zeke mutters and lets a neat column of ashes fall on the bedspread. "It's none of your business."

"Here's someone who needs a little Eskimo time," she says, and Casey laughs, a shrill, hysterical sound that breaks off quickly and suddenly. When she looks at him, he's pressed his hands over his mouth. "Casey, for fuck's sake."

"What?"

"What?" Zeke echoes from the bed, but his voice is nothing like Casey's breathy little-boy voice.

Casey walks up to the bed, just out of arm's reach of Zeke. Zeke looks at him impassively. "What happened?" Casey asks. "Did you have a fight with your mother?"

"She pinched your photos," Zeke says and chuckles, a rumbling whiskey-and-smoke sound. He stubs out his cigarette and sits up. "Every single one. Maybe she'll sell them to her friends in New York."

"What photos?" Casey asks. There's an open photo album on the floor by the bed, Delilah sees. It might have been thrown there. She recognises Zeke's mother in the pictures, wearing a hideously shoulder-padded suit. The eighties took no prisoners, but Zeke's mother manages to look gorgeous anyway.

"Your photos."

"What do you want me to do?" Casey asks, not in a sarcastic voice like Delilah might have used, but honest-to-God earnestly.

"I don't know. Burn down the house?"

"Don't be stupid," Delilah says. "Just trash her stuff. That's what I'd do."

Zeke looks at her. He almost looks a little surprised. "Don't you think that's a little petty?"

"Sure."

Casey blinks rapidly a couple of times and looks around the room and says, "I think she's pretty fucking petty, too. She took the photographs." The last like it's a revelation.

"She did," Zeke says. "She told me she wished I was dead."

Casey's mouth tightens, but he just picks up the photo album from the floor and says, "She's pretty, though. Is that your dad?" He flips through a couple of pages. "You're not in here."

"Nope," Zeke says.

"We should burn it."

"We should burn all of it," Delilah says. Zeke's mother's things are lovely, a little five years ago but lovely. Zeke's mother knows her stuff.

Zeke's sitting on the edge of the bed. There are dark smudges under his eyes, a tightness to his mouth. He looks exhausted. Delilah tries to imagine him crying over his mother and fails. It's easier imagining him pulling books from the shelves, turning over tables, smashing mirrors.

"Is there some kind of rule here? No trashing Mommie Dearest's junk? Why are you sitting there like a lump of meat?"

"I was tired," he says.

There's a thump. Casey's pulled a couple of books off their shelves and dropped them on the floor.

"We could have a barbecue," he says.

*

Delilah knows how she'd do it. Pull things down in a frenzy, throw fragile knickknacks at the wall. Scream.

Zeke smokes and packs things in a box, silently and methodically. Delilah smokes and tries to help him, but he doesn't make room for her or even seem to notice her.

"She really--" Casey mumbles behind Delilah, under his breath. "I mean. She took all of them. Or they're gone, at least. Every single fucking one."

"She thought they were good," Zeke says. "Good work. She was surprised you were good for anything."

Casey's quiet after that, and Delilah can't seem to think of anything to say.

The box isn't very big and there isn't really that much stuff. Delilah pulls the cover off the bed and puts it on top of the balsa statuettes of birds and animals, the photo album, the few books.

"Did she ever even live here?" she asks. Zeke shrugs, but his hand lingers on the cover, as if he wants to keep it. _Mama's boy_, she thinks. Zeke's mother must be some piece of work. More than Delilah picked up that morning in the kitchen. She'd love to know.

She wonders what would have happened if they never showed up here. Would Zeke still be lying on his mother's bed? In his boxers. Chain-smoking. Doing God knows what.

Maybe she doesn't really want to know.

*

There's a light still on next door.

"Mrs Gordon's an insomniac," Zeke says.

"Do your neighbours ever, like, suspect?" Casey asks. Zeke leans against the door and looks up at the overcast sky.

"Suspect what?"

Delilah can almost feel Casey's eyes seeking hers, but she looks out over the dark backyard. Dark but for the pale cream-yellow square of light falling from Mrs Gordon's kitchen window onto the gravel.

The night's wet and cold, but there's no rain. The damp is in the air, pushing under her clothes, probably making her hair hang limp and dull. Zeke's hair stands right up in insubordinate tufts. Casey's hair is unwashed and clings to his skull. The world refuses to explain what she's doing here on a bad hair day, with no make up and her glasses on, wearing a fucking flannel shirt.

I'm one of them, she thinks and shudders.

"Zeke?" Casey says. He's giving off his beta dog vibes again, almost lying on his back with his paws in the air. She can't see the new and improved Casey anywhere, that crazy little fucker who cracked Gabe's nose with a boot. "He was fucking insane," Gabe had told her. "Boy was tweaking on something nasty."

_Desperation's nasty enough_, she almost answered, but it wouldn't have been very in character for Delilah Profitt.

"Zeke?" Casey says again, and Zeke drops the box on the ground and snaps, "WHAT?"

Casey doesn't flinch back, and there's the steel in him. He hides it, Delilah thinks. Maybe he doesn't even know he does. "How about--" He's looking up at Zeke through his lashes. The light from the window has drawn a soft shadow over his cheekbone, like a bruise. Usually his bruises look like shadows. "There's that place down by the lake."

 

Zeke pours gasoline over the little pile of photographs, books and clothes and Casey throws a match. They watch it go poof. No one says anything.

"That was kinda anti-climactic," Delilah says after a while. Zeke stares at the dying flames and says nothing. Casey looks at her. The light from the fire turns his blue eyes hazel and blank.

"This is such an ugly place," he says. The pebbled beach looks muddy and harsh in the flickering light.

It's cold, too. "Maybe we could find some wood. Since we have a fire."

"Let's just go," Zeke says suddenly, too quickly.

"You're acting psycho, Zeke," Delilah says, because he is. He rubs his head and stares at the fire.

"You haven't seen me act psycho, Delilah," he says. A few of the old photos have escaped; Delilah sees one of Zeke's mother smiling in a gorgeous evening gown. Zeke kicks it into the fire. He doesn't put much energy into it. His expression doesn't change. "You don't want me to, either, so just drop it."

"Drop what? What did she do to you?" She has to follow him around the fire and up the beach towards his car. "You do know that the less you tell me, the more I imagine."

"We can imagine a lot," Casey says. He's following, three steps behind.

Zeke stops and turns. He leans against the side of the car and smiles sweetly. "You'd like a little scoop, wouldn't you? You like secrets."

"I just want to know what the fuck's going on."

"You remind me of her," he says softly. The smile stays. It was never a very nice smile. "You're the fast food version, one in every town."

She slaps him, and he hardly flinches. "Do that again," he says. She hears Casey move restlessly behind her, but he doesn't matter right now. She slaps Zeke again, so hard her palm burns. When she raises her hand a third time, he grabs her wrist and twists, and her knees buckle and she spins around helplessly and ends up pinned against the car, falling backwards over the hood.

"Zeke!" Casey yells in the background, but he's a mosquito buzzing in her ear. Her wrist burns; her whole arm burns. His expression still hasn't changed. She wonders, in a distant part of her brain, if he practices the whole impassively menacing look in front of the mirror.

"What'd she do to you?" she asks, a little breathlessly now. He's got her arm twisted behind her somehow; she doesn't even know how exactly he did it. "Call you names, fucked up your potty training, what?"

Casey in the background: "Zeke, just let her go." They both ignore him. Zeke isn't even breathing hard, but he's pressed against her and he's ready to go - this shit is foreplay to him. If she were Casey, she'd be naked already. There are different rules between Zeke and her.

Her back aches where it's wedged against the hood. She's not sure he's looking at her, really. It's hard to tell in the dark; the faint play of firelight on his face hardly shows his features beyond dark eye sockets and hollowed cheeks. She stares up at him anyway and goes on: "Did she get drunk and drop you on your head? Did she kill your dad in front of your eyes? I'm guessing here, Zeke."

He shoves her even further up until she sits on the hood with her legs dangling and her arm pinned by her side, Zeke silent and hard-faced, pressed against her. She could probably kick him in the nuts and knock him off her. If she wanted. If she were prepared to risk her arm. If she wanted.

"Zeke!"

"Back off, Casey," Zeke growls, and Delilah sees Casey take two steps backwards, change his mind, come forward again. She feels the warning in the tightening of Zeke's muscles against her, but she fails, somehow, to call out. Maybe she wants to see what will happen.

When Casey touches Zeke's sleeve, Zeke lets go of Delilah and swings.

She's never seen Zeke hurt Casey before. Casey falls on his back, curls up into a ball with his hands over his face. She's never seen it, just the results, and it occurs to her that maybe things are more than a little fucked up. She's somehow been ignoring that all this time.

Zeke's kneeling by Casey, touches him with gentler hands and Delilah hopes there's been enough pushing, that they can get back to either ignoring their issues or proceed directly to the emotional purging scene. She can see it already; Zeke sobbing, maybe, telling some sordid tale of childhood abuse, a few comforting words, everyone feels much better, everyone goes back to bed.

Instead, she sees Casey wrap his arms around Zeke's neck and Zeke pushing him down on the stony ground. She sees stains on Casey's fingers; they'd be bright red if there was enough light to show colour. She does hear a sob, but she thinks it's Casey. Casey should be kicking the shit out of Zeke, she thinks. Zeke needs a good ass-kicking.

Casey's stroking Zeke's face with his bloody fingers. Delilah can see Casey's face and it's only a split lip, nothing broken, nothing bad.

"Are you okay?" Casey whispers. Zeke moves against him and Casey's eyes flutter shut.

Delilah notices that she's still leaning against the car. Her back hurts. She rubs her arm; it feels numb where it's not painful. It's even colder down here than in Zeke's yard. There's a mist hanging over the lake, a chilly white that's bright in the moonlight and really ties the whole faux-gothic mood together.

"Are you okay?" Casey asks again and Delilah looks back in time to see Zeke shake him like a rat, his fingers digging into Casey's pale throat and Casey's eyes still closed.

It looks dangerous, but who the fuck knows, maybe they play these games all the time when Delilah's not around.

"Shut up," Zeke snarls and Casey chokes and tries to cough, and Delilah pushes herself away from the car and kicks Zeke in the side.

"No!" Casey screams like she kicked him, even though she knows she hit Zeke, good in the ribs, no collateral damage.

Zeke rolls off Casey, gets on his feet in one fluid movement. He towers over her. She always forgets in between times - in two minutes, even - how tall he is. She was almost as tall as Stan.

She takes a step backwards. She's not like Casey. Behind Zeke, Casey's crawling to his feet. I'm not like Casey, she thinks. Casey's not afraid of Zeke. He's coughing, trying to save his throat by making the coughs shallow. His eyes reflect the firelight and blink orange for a second, like a cat's.

"Zeke, please," he gasps. She almost understands him. It's right there, some kind of answer. Something in the fire crackles and flares and for a second, they're all lit in stark relief. Casey looks terrified now. Zeke is utterly blank. Casey takes another step towards them and Delilah quickly opens her mouth and says, "I hope this isn't all about some dirty little incest secret thin--"

He must have pulled the punch a little; some sense left in him, because she doesn't feel anything break. He doesn't let her fall, grabs her by the arms and his voice is barely audible over the rush of blood in her ears. "You shut the fuck up about her."

His face is wet, gleaming in the flickering light. "You're crying!" she says. It hurts to speak, but her brain has lost contact with her mouth. She thinks she hears Casey sobbing somewhere, but it might be her, it might be Zeke or it might be the entire fucking cheerleading squad crying in sympathy for all she knows.

"What?" he says. Her head swims and there are little bursts of light going off in front of her eyes, tiny fireworks without any sound other than the dull pounding of her heart. She can feel the imprint of his fist on her cheekbone, like the fist was white-hot iron and a mirror would show her a black-scorched mark. "WHAT?" he says again and shakes her.

Her mouth goes on without the rest of her. "I'm not holding it against you, Zeke," she says. "I mean, you're clearly having a fucked up day--"

"Shut the fuck up," he hisses at her and then he suddenly cries out and crumples to the ground. Delilah goes down with him, even though he's let go of her arms. Her legs don't really carry.

Casey stands over them, swaying like there's a wind shoving him around. He's still holding a thick branch aloft like a baseball bat. She thinks his eyes have turned all black, nothing but pupil. She might be imagining it; she's not sure what she's thinking, her head hurts from thinking.

There are hands on her again, soft searching hands and she turns around and Zeke is reaching for her. He's rolled over onto his side and there's a stain on his forehead, darkwetsticky, that has to be blood trickling down from his scalp.

"I hope I cracked your fucking skull!" Casey yells in a broken voice and he's there too, definitely sobbing. He'll probably have the whole catharsis thing for all three of them. "I hope. I hope. _Fuck_."

Zeke stares at Casey and his face is still wet when Delilah touches it, runs her fingers over from his cheekbone down to his mouth. He blinks but doesn't turn away when she presses her fingertips over his lips. He blinks again and pushes her hand away, rubs his face. He manages to spread the blood around like streaks of warpaint on his forehead.

"Wanna share?" she asks.

"I'm not--" he starts. Casey's there, kneeling beside her. Casey's hands feel the same as Zeke's, soft and reaching for her.

"Sometimes people cry like that after something so shocking that they haven't noticed it themselves. Like a bomb blast or something. Crying without even knowing." Delilah lies back. The gravel is the most uncomfortable bed in history, but her body feels heavy and uncooperative. Their bodies are hot and confining on both sides of her. Zeke's breathing shallow, short breaths in her ear and Casey's voice is right in her other ear, a little wet and choked. "I just read that somewhere. In a book about war."

"This isn't war," Delilah says.

"It isn't?" Zeke asks, his lips on the side of her neck, his wet face pressed against her hair. Blood and tears taste almost the same, she thinks. They move against her and they might be holding hands on her hip somewhere. That would be something so typical and mushy and fucked up that it could be true. She wriggles her hand out from under Casey and finds theirs, clasped.

"I can't kill you," Zeke says.

"That's comforting to know," Delilah says carefully. Casey goes still against her, waiting.

"No," Zeke says, "I can't-- You won't let me kill you."

It probably makes sense to him. Her head's finally stopped spinning The sky is very close to her nose; it's probably about to fall. It's the fog, but it looks dangerous and mysterious. She turns her head and makes the kiss accidental. She never kisses Zeke. His mouth feels unfamiliar. The taste of salt and cigarettes is not, though. He kisses her back, slowly. He probably has a broken skull. Concussion. She doesn't care. No one's apologising. Casey's hand slides over her face, over Zeke's face. A pebble digs into her hip.

"Fuck it," Casey mumbles behind her, a sort of general dismissal of the world. She almost agrees.


	12. Shine

He wakes up and there's something wrong about being this cold with the sharp, white-hot sun in his eyes. Casey thinks, in predictable sequence, _I'm cold_ and _someone pull the fucking curtain_ and _must have had a nightmare or something, fell off the bed again--_

The whiteness fades to pale blue and he's staring out a car window at a pristine autumn sky. He's curled up with his face pressed up against the glass. Someone's hot breath on his right cheek, freezing glass on his left. He can't feel his feet but there are arms around his waist, hands on his hands.

He moves his head gingerly, and there's pain. A happy mix of a hangover headache, a crick in his neck and that too-familiar ache of a pummelled face. The arm around his waist tightens and there's Zeke's sleep-rough voice on the puff of air in his ear. "I think my back's stuck like this now."

More movement, and Casey realises the hands clutching his aren't Zeke's. He can't diagram their limbs, but Delilah's head is in Zeke's lap, her hair spread over Zeke's legs and falling almost all the way to the floor. She's awake; her eyelashes flutter. The sharp light is on her face.

Casey is breathless for a second. The light is amazing. She's perfect like this, lined with sleep, her hair a crow's nest of dark tangles and dirt and dust. She'd shake her head and make a lemon face if he told her she was beautiful right now.

She blinks one last time and opens her eyes, twists her neck and looks up at them, her eyes in a myopic squint. Casey wonders where her glasses are. Hopes they're not what's poking him in the back.

"Tell me I didn't just sleep in a car," she says. She sounds perfectly awake, much more so than Casey feels, Zeke sounds, than any of them looks.

"You just slept in the car," Zeke says, still in Casey's ear. Casey shivers, either from the cold or because Zeke's mouth touches his skin. It's the cold, he decides, reluctantly, and fumbles for the door handle.

The door swings open and he almost falls out. He would've fallen on his face on the sharp, wet pebbles if Zeke's arm hadn't tightened around his waist and reeled him back in. Delilah makes an annoyed sound and her hands scrabble over their thighs, trying to tug loose strands of her hair that are stuck between them.

Zeke lets him go and he gets up. His legs are waking up, pins and needles, and he leans against the car and waits for them to stop. The morning is sun-bright with almost nothing left of last night's fog. There's still a layer of dew on everything. The sunlight plays and sparkles on the rippled surface of the lake.

They crawl out of the car and stand next to him. Zeke stretches slowly, luxuriously. Delilah tries to untangle her hair with her fingers. They're so brightly lit that Casey can hardly see their faces.

The remains of the fire is a heap of scattered ashes and coals a bit further down the beach. It looks innocent. Like some kids camped out there.

There's a crumbling smudge of dried blood on Zeke's forehead, right under his hairline. More blood stuck in clumps in his wirebrush hair. Casey remembers hitting him but not what it felt like.

He's probably been shivering all along, but he only notices it now. His teeth are chattering. His hands tremble from the cold and he pushes them deep into his pockets. His legs ache now that they've stopped burning. He realises he can see his breath in the still air, faint white cloud of steam that goes nicely with the scattered traces of the fog lifting from the lake.

The sun hides behind a cloud he didn't see coming and bright yellow turns to cold grey around them. Delilah looks older now, harsh and lean as she digs a pack of cigarettes out from Zeke's coat pocket and lights up. Zeke nabs lighter and smokes from her hand. The skin around his eyes is swollen and dark. Casey avoids his own reflection in the car window. He can feel his face; he doesn't need to see it to know what it looks like.

"You're gonna fall over, Case," Zeke says and slings his arm around Casey's shoulders.

"I'm cold," he says. Zeke doesn't look cold.

"Shower," Delilah says. "I'm sure you two Neanderthals can frolic around all day without paying attention to personal hygiene, but I'm not playing that game."

There's a silence. Casey thinks it's different from the silence before, when they were all just trying to wake up. They're awake now and the sun has shaken off the cloud. There's the sound of a magpie bitching them out from a safe place high in one of the weeping willows, and their silence is hesitant and brittle.

"I don't--" he says, and Zeke says, "If we--"

"What?" Delilah says.

This place looks deserted and separate from the world. Birds and trees and the ugliest lake in history with its oily surface and black-pebbled beach, but if he is still for a second, he can hear the rumble of the freeway not far away. Narrow contrails slash across the sky.

He thinks about his parents. They must be awake now, going about their Saturday morning routine. Newspaper, coffee, pancakes maybe. He doesn't think they'll notice that he's gone until ten am or later. He could probably still sneak back, if he climbed up the fire ladder and over the roof to his room.

"I don't want to go home," he says, because he thinks it and they might as well know. He takes a few steps down the beach. This is too close to home. Zeke's house is dangerous. "I don't want to go home."

He doesn't know if he means forever or just for today. He can't really think that far ahead. His head hurts, but he feels like he could just go. Just go and not think any more about his father's morning papers or his mother's banana pancakes.

He turns around to see Zeke flick his cigarette to the ground and rub his head with careful fingers. It must hurt after last night. Zeke's shrug looks a little stiff. "Okay," he says. "Let's just go."

"Yeah," Delilah says brightly. "Because running away is a really good idea. Mature, too."

They look at her. She's smiling, still squinting; she probably hasn't noticed that her glasses are gone. "What?" she says. "I'm coming with you, of course."

*

He sits alone in the backseat because Delilah calls shotgun. They don't say anything for a while. Casey thinks they're avoiding things. Good idea.

He waits eleven songs before he speaks. His Rammstein tape, from _Sehnsucht _to _Küss Mich_, and then he asks, "Where are we going? Columbus?"

"No!" Zeke snaps, and Delilah twists around in her seat and says, "Are you crazy? Looking like this?"

"Where then?"

"Who cares?" Zeke says. Casey's not entire sure how fast he's driving, but it feels fast. If it wasn't winter, it would be pretty cool to have a convertible. No one's said anything definite about this trip. He's pretty sure it's a Saturday day trip, and right now that seems good enough. He keeps forgetting that Herrington exists, though. He looks out the window at the landscape rushing by and it looks endless, and he forgets that this is just a kind of bungee jump and the rubber cord around his foot will pull him back sooner or later.

He's proud of the bungee metaphor and opens his mouth to tell Zeke and Delilah about it when Zeke says, "Gas station," and swerves into the lot without hitting the brakes.

The bathrooms are around back. Zeke parks and they sit in the car for a while. "I'm not going in for the key looking like this," Delilah says.

"You're up, Case," Zeke says.

The proprietor is very tall and very old and wears a frayed and oil-stained Reds cap. He looks like he might be hiding his Winchester under the counter. There's a certain patina to the place. It's been here a while and isn't in any hurry to leave.

He picks up three cans of Red Mountain Dew and a pile of Slim Jims. "Two packs of Pall Malls and the key to the restroom," he mumbles.

"You eighteen?" the guy says and squints at him over the counter. He's freakishly tall, taller than Zeke by a couple of inches, and has a craggy face with a nose that droops over his mouth like Gonzo's beak.

"No," Casey says and gives up trying to stop himself from laughing. There's a grin growing on his face. It's almost like it's got a life independent of his. The guy frowns and squints even more, but rings it up. No smokes for Zeke, though. Casey giggles through his independent grin, a little more hysterically than he'd like, but he can't feel the bungee cord and the guy looks like a freak and Zeke and Delilah are probably making out in the oil-slicked backyard.

"Hey kid," the guy says when he's paid and turns to leave.

"Huh?"

"You got something on your face." Casey touches his face automatically, and there's the sore spot. Two sore spots, really, the crown of his cheekbone and the place next to his nose where the skin is thin over his teeth.

"My boyfriend hit me," he says and still can't stop grinning.

"Punk," the guy mutters at his back. He's never been called that before.

*

Zeke and Delilah are, in fact, making out in the backyard, leaning against Zeke's car and kissing slowly. Zeke has his hands on Delilah's hips and she's burrowed hers under his coat. They look like they belong together, both a little scruffy and road-worn, tall and dark and pretty. Casey stops grinning.

Delilah spots him and waves at him, waggles her fingers and twirls away from Zeke. She has a smile for Casey, a kiss for him and a quick grope before she snatches the bathroom key from his pocket and flits away.

*

They stand in front of the sinks, in a row. The room is surpassingly clean. The mirror's cracked but they can still see themselves in it. Casey notes, not for the first time, that he's pathetically short next to the two of them.

"Oh, Christ," Delilah says. "I look like a homeless person. I am a bag lady."

"Don't see any bags," Zeke says and leans forward to study his hairline. "I haven't puked today, so I guess Casey didn't give me a concussion."

"Lucky you," Casey says. He feels dirty all over, gritty and greasy and covered in caked, crumbling mud. He thinks fondly of his toothbrush. It's in its holder, baby blue next to his mother's red one and his father's navy one. Their toothbrushes are cosy and happy together.

"I'm gonna go buy a toothbrush," Delilah says. "I can't face the day with dirty teeth."

"You wouldn't survive a day after the apocalypse," Zeke says and ruffles her hair. "Oh my GOD, how can you live with yourself, woman! Your hair is filthy."

She swats him over the head and marches out. Casey ignores Zeke and washes his face carefully.

Zeke picks dirt and dried blood out of his hair. Casey fails to feel bad about clubbing him. He supposes it's wrong somehow. An image of Miss Burke's earnest and clueless face appears. _"I hit my boyfriend with a piece of wood because he was trying to kill my girlfriend"_ sounds a little extreme. Sounds like one of those English kitchen sink dramas, except in one of those they'd never speak to each other again.

Instead, here they are. Zeke ducks his head under the faucet and holds it there for a while. He reaches out with his hand to hook a finger into a loop on Casey's jeans and pull him closer. Casey waits and Zeke strokes the small of his back, just because, apparently.

Nothing like that in kitchen sink dramas. Nothing like Zeke's crooked smile when he straightens up, his hair dripping water down his neck and over his face. Nothing like his hand on Casey's ass and his wet head pressed against Casey's cheek, his wet mouth against Casey's neck.

"A two-by-four to the head won't stop me," he mumbles.

"It wasn't a two-by-four, it was a willow branch," Casey says. It's like it doesn't matter that shit happens. It makes no sense; it should matter. Miss Burke's worry, his parents' suspicious eyes, even Zeke's mother's contemptuous eyes tell him that.

Zeke's large hands on his hips don't tell him anything more than that Zeke wants him. That's easy to read. He arches his back a little, turns his face to Zeke's.

Zeke just leans down and kisses him, and that _is_ like a movie. Casey closes his eyes. Zeke runs his hand up his back to cup the back of his neck. Casey clutches at his arms.

The door opens and someone says, "What the hell--"

Zeke freezes but doesn't let go of Casey immediately. When he does, he draws back slowly.

A gaunt middle-aged man stands in the door, outlined in sunlight. "See something you like?" Zeke asks mildly. He still has a hand resting lightly on the small of Casey's back.

The guy steps into the bathroom, makes a detour around them and heads for a stall. He makes a face, Casey sees, like he smells something rotten. He might have mumbled something. Maybe "faggots." That's what it sounded like.

"What did you say?" Casey asks. Zeke's hand presses at his back; the other hand is wandering down his chest, fingertips tracing the buttons on his shirt.

The guy stops and turns to them. "You boys shouldn't be here," he says. He still looks disgusted. Casey cocks his head. He's picked up that from Zeke. Zeke has a way of tilting his head a little to the side that makes him look dangerously interested. Casey is pretty sure he doesn't look quite as dangerous, but he feels it. Like he could kick ass. Zeke's fingers have found skin and Casey moves his hips forward. He's staring at the guy, but everything else in him is feeling Zeke's hands and Zeke's legs pressed against his, Zeke's breath on the side of his face.

"Wanna stop us?" he asks, hissing through his teeth when Zeke's hand cups him and rubs. It's wild, he feels completely reckless. "Fuck," he mutters, turning back to see Zeke's eyes crinkle with amusement, "oh, fuck--"

"I'm calling the--" the guy starts, louder now, but Zeke snaps his head around and says, "Try making it out the door first, asshole," hauls Casey even closer, yanks at his fly. His hands are hard and fast now and Casey thinks about the fucked up first time in the school bathroom. His breath is catching and he's lost his balance; the only thing between him and the floor is Zeke's arm around his waist.

He's almost forgotten about the guy, just like that - out of sight, out of mind - but Zeke yanks him around suddenly, fast enough to make his head spin, and the guy is trying to get past them and Zeke's hand shoots out and grabs him by the collar. Casey is stuck between them. The guy is afraid. Casey can hear his quick breaths, quicker even than his own.

The door opens again. There's a short between-seconds breath and then Delilah says, "What are you idiots doing, playing musical toilets?"

"Hey!" the guy says with startled, high-pitched indignance. Casey snickers. Zeke smiles, wolfishly.

"Short-eyes here was ogling Case," he says and lets the guy go.

"I wasn't!" the guy says, backing off. He doesn't look disgusted anymore, just scared. Casey's snickers grow into a laugh.

"These places are always full of perverts," Delilah says.

"Run, pervert!" Casey breathes between peals of laughter. His stomach hurts and it's weird to laugh and be this turned on at the same time, but it's like the part that laughs and the part that wants to fuck aren't connected at all.

He doesn't see if the door hits the guy in the ass on his way out because Zeke grabs him and lifts him, slams him against the wall, and it's almost like that first time, but he's not afraid now, not afraid at all, just breathless and ready, still laughing through his gasps.

"You guys are demented," Delilah says somewhere close to him, close and getting closer, and her hand turns his face and her mouth meets his while Zeke pushes hard against him and runs his teeth over his collarbone.

*

His father's face is a caricature of anger. Eyebrows pulled together, a deep groove between them; his mouth pressed into a tight line and his cheeks dangerously flushed.

"Been out," Casey says, trying half-heartedly not to sound smug. He feels smug. _You can't stop me_, he thinks. This new carelessness is like power. What are they gonna do, anyway? Chain him to the radiator?

"You're--"

"--grounded. yeah, I know." It's exhilarating.

"This attitude is--"

"Sorry," he says, not sorry at all. His father gapes at him.

"What's wrong with you, Casey?" his mother asks. She's wringing her hands. Her face is wide-eyed and hurt; he tries to remember what it felt like to regret hurting her. "Is it-- Does this have to do with Zeke?"

"Save it, Eliza," his father snaps. "He's not listening. He thinks he's a rebel now. Go to your room, Casey."

"No supper, either," Casey says and goes to his room, biting back the laughter until he's alone.

They've been through his stuff again. Looking for drugs or Satanist paraphernalia, no doubt. He doesn't care. He has nothing they can take from him.

He's hungry, but it's a small discomfort, easy to ignore. They ate at noon, in a small roadside diner, surrounded by truckers and tourists. Delilah, her face washed and her hair brushed and tied back, had stopped bitching about looking like a homeless person. Sex mellowed her out a little, interesting sex mellowed her out even more, and she'd come with his hand jammed down her jeans, gasping and cooing in his ear, while Zeke held onto his hips and bit his shoulder. Casey's seen National Geographic documentaries about lions mating, and Zeke's like that: he bites triumphantly and possessively. Casey just likes to taste blood.

His parents are jabbering about him downstairs, but he doesn't feel like eavesdropping. He thinks about the sun in Delilah's hair when they turned back onto the highway - it was a little greasy and strands kept working loose from the scrunchie, and she would brush them back with an impatient gesture. Once, Casey reached out and did it for her, and had one of those short, stunning moments of _holy fuck, is this me?_

Delilah Profitt with greasy hair and her glasses perched a little unsteadily on her nose - Zeke'd found them under the front seat, and it seemed someone had stepped on them at some point - and Casey had stared at his fingers on her cheek with silent awe. Holy fuck, is this me?

Zeke's wide grin at him in the rear-view mirror had only made the feeling stronger, and he'd actually shivered, a slow, sharp-fingered _frisson_ all the way down his back.

Sitting on his bed, still in his dirty and ill-used clothes from yesterday, Casey thinks, _that's me, all right._ Typical of him to have his moments not some time when he's actually got Delilah pushed down and naked, but from something so innocent as his hand stroking back a strand of her hair, touching the curve of her jaw, the delicate shell of her ear. Her smile, half-sweet, half-annoyed.

"Lovebirds," Zeke had said with a snort from behind the wheel, and Casey had met his eyes again. He didn't think it was jealousy in Zeke's eyes; that would be stupid, wouldn't it? Zeke had him in the palm of his hand. In the clench of his fist.

There are bloodstains on his shirt collar, grass stains and mud stains on his jeans, probably come stains on his underwear. He undresses slowly, drops his clothes carelessly on the floor. "Good luck, mom," he mumbles and pads naked through the hall to the bathroom.

A whole day on the lam, driving directionless along unfamiliar roads. Zeke had seemed to pick them at random, and neither Casey nor Delilah protested. Delilah leaned her head against Casey's shoulder and smoked in silence, and Casey enjoyed her presence and watched the landscape change from rural to urban to rural to urban, over and over.

At three PM, Zeke pulled over, parked the GTO on a tractor crossing and got out of the car. Delilah and Casey followed.

"We go any further, we won't make it back today," Zeke said and dug his hands into his pockets. Casey thinks, now, that Zeke looked a little sick - he probably had a headache like crazy. Zeke wasn't the type to let on, though.

Casey had just mumbled a vague, "uhuh." Zeke called the shots in the car. Casey thought about the road going on and on and maybe leading somewhere out of the reach of this town and everyone in it, but the next thought had been, _not today_.

The shower awakens all sort of aches and pains in his body. He's almost forgotten about them; the slow honey of the day has seeped through him and covered the hurt, but it's back now with the pounding heat of the water on his shoulders.

He pokes gingerly at the bruise on his face and hopes, viciously, that Zeke has one motherfucker of a headache. Then he simply wishes Zeke were here to lock him into his arms in bed. Zeke has that tendency to grab hold in sleep; it's almost impossible to tear loose once he gets a good grip. It's claustrophobic and comfortable.

They'd sat down on a row of boulders on the side of the field. It wasn't very warm, and the sky had clouded over, but they stayed there for almost an hour, mostly in silence. Cars occasionally passed them on the road. Casey had leaned his head back and watched birds circle above them, dark specks against the blue-fading-to-grey. There'd been a few more Moments. It was just that kind of day. The sight of a rip on Zeke's jeans or a dead leaf clinging to Delilah's coat cut him somehow, pretended to take on some kind of meaning - or rather _Meaning_, capitalised - vague and taunting him with importance he couldn't grasp.

He turns off the shower and thinks he might just have been happy.


	13. Into The Void

Casey is smiling when he comes into the shower room, and that's scary enough, but then he doesn't even notice that Gabe is glaring at him, and that's when Stan gets that feeling of nothing-good-will-come-of-this.

Casey hangs up his towel and Stan looks away, following the general shower room rule: do not check your fellow men out unless you really like pain.

More people come in after Casey; guys on the team, mostly. Lucas Bronheim, Jon Raymond, Jarr Hatton. Stan puts his head under the tepid spray and longs for a bath. He still works out, of course, runs and swims and lifts, but it's like his body has decided to wuss out on him. Gabe caught him with a shoulder in the ribs when they were having it out over a ball, and now he _aches_, far more than he thinks he should.

Before PE, he went to the library and checked out _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_, and Mrs Brummel remembered his name and smiled her wavery little old lady smile at him. His parents have stopped looking at him like they don't know whether to call the cops for a drug check or a shrink for a psych evaluation.

Gabe calls him "Bookworm". Stan doesn't know if Gabe resents him for leaving or thanks him for the free spot at the top. He doesn't know if Gabe resents getting Stan's sloppy seconds. Stan has tried to get used to seeing Delilah with Gabe. It's stopped pissing him off, but he doesn't hang around when they're together.

"Yo, Stan," Gabe says now. He's under the shower next to him. The bandage on his nose is gone, everything is back to normal.

"Gabe," Stan says.

"Don't see you around the same anymore."

"Been busy," Stan says. Busy avoiding Gabe, of course. Busy making his Ds turn into Bs. It hasn't happened yet, but he has faith.

He's noticed that he has fewer friends now than before he quit the team. Having fewer friends gives him more time to study. Which is what he wanted, right? Right.

He blinks water out of his eyes and in front of him, Casey turns around and Stan can see bruises on his chest. Round little marks dappling his narrow ribcage, a few just above his collarbone, a few - Stan lets his eyes drop down below the comfort zone - all the way down along the jut of his hipbones.

Stan looks away again. The water feels almost hot for a while and he closes his eyes, soapsud heaven, until Gabe says, "What's wrong with him?"

Stan opens his eyes and says, "who?"

Casey's smiling again. There's a faint shadow of discoloration on his cheekbone, but the rest of his face is pale and smooth, his eyelashes clingy, wet feathers on his cheek. His smile is small and private and beatific.

Stan turns to Gabe and the feeling of _nothing good_ is back.

"Casey," Gabe says. "Hey, Casey."

It takes a few seconds before Casey even opens his eyes, and when he does, they're heavy-lidded and unfocused. He's been a million miles away and isn't quite back from orbit yet.

"Hey, cocksucker," Gabe says. He still sounds calm, but Stan knows him; has known him since third grade and Gabe's about to blow.

"Gabe..." he says, and then Casey blinks a few times and focuses his eyes on Gabe.

"What?" he says, as if Gabe is a minor distraction from something far more important. Casey is really out surfing the great divide today, and there are cold shivers running over Stan's skin despite the blissfully hot water.

"Gabe," Stan says again, but Gabe has taken a step forward, towards Casey. He's tall and sleek and outweighs Casey by about sixty pounds, and Casey is still smiling.

"Where'd you get the lovebites?" Gabe asks and Stan notices that everyone else has fallen silent in the room. Lovebites, holy fuck; that's what they are. He forgets the shower room rule again and stares. There's one on Casey's inner thigh - unmistakable. Someone likes to bite. Delilah sometimes gave Stan lovebites, in the heat of the moment. Never like this, though, piebalding his skin with bruises. Some of them look like fingerprints, there, on the sides of his hips. Like. Like someone held him down and--

"Huh?" Casey says before his eyes drop, tell-tale, to look down on himself.

"We're shocked and appalled here," Gabe goes on. "You broke your vows."

Casey still doesn't look afraid, but he doesn't answer, either. "Like it rough, huh?" Gabe says. Stan takes a step and then he notices that everyone else has, too: Lucas and Jarr and Jon and Gordie and Duvall and there are more here, maybe a dozen guys in the room. "I guess you found someone who likes little chickenshit fags."

Casey's head comes up with a snap, as if _that_ insult, among the rest, somehow means something. "We got something in common then," he hisses.

Silence. Stan counts his own heartbeats coming too fast; onetwothreefour-- and then Gabe says "_What_ did you say?"

Casey doesn't answer, but now his shoulders are hunched defensively and he's gone back to the old Casey Stan knows and doesn't much love, but is damned happy to see again. Gabe will push him around and Casey will let himself be pushed and all will be well.

"What a fucking weirdo," Lucas says. "Fucking stalker, too, man. Gabe, you should watch out, he's after your girl--"

Stan doesn't think anyone but Gabe and he are watching close enough to see the quick little grin spark brightly over Casey's face, but Gabe sees it and it's all she wrote.

"Gabe, for fuck's sake!" Stan says, a little louder this time, and Gabe spins around at him, his face twisting in fury and Stan almost slips on the tiles.

"Back off, Rosado."

Gabe's hand is rough and too intimate on his chest, pushing him aside. Stan looks around and there's no help in the faces there. They're all waiting, because Gabe is the biggest swinging dick in this room now and there's a status quo to be reinforced.

It's creepier than usual, because they're all butt naked; there's some kind of primeval vibe running through the room. The way everyone starts moving closer, silently. The way Gabe slits his eyes and says, his voice dipping low, "What's so funny, asshole?"

*

"You're pretty fucking funny," Casey mutters, like he can't feel the vibe at all, or maybe, maybe, Stan realises, like he doesn't fucking _care_ about the vibe.

Gabe moves with the speed that earned him his place on the team. It's almost completely silent now, and Stan wonders how that can be, since the showers are still running. But all he can hear are the soft slaps of Gabe's feet on the tiles and his own breaths tearing painfully through his throat. Then Gabe grabs Casey's skinny, bruised arms and almost lifts him from the floor. "Fuck you, Gabe," Casey says clearly, and there's a gleam in his eyes, a dangerous gleam. "Delilah sends her love," and he spits, a well-aimed goober right in Gabe's wet face.

Stan loses sight of things then, because he's too stunned to move and the rest of the guys are quicker on their feet, closing in like a pack of wolves while Stan snaps for air. Never in a million years, never fucking _ever_ has he witnessed anyone sign his own death warrant in spit like that. He looks away when he hears the first punch, the slap of wet skin and a choked grunt from Casey. Looks around helplessly because they're all there now and you don't step in, you don't get into personal business, and for fuck's sake, Casey didn't just ask for it, he got down on his bony knees and _begged_ to be fucked up.

Someone, probably Jarr, yells, "Give it to him good!" and it's the signal, they all start cheering, and it reminds Stan of something, something other than a bunch of naked teenagers beating up someone smaller in a shower room, but he's backed up almost all the way to the door before he remembers. _The Accused_, gang bang scene. Jodie Foster getting it good, only here it's Casey Connor and half the football team, and what are they _doing_ to him? The cheering crashes between the naked walls and it sounds like a game, just a bunch of guys supporting the team, but Stan can hear the painful squeak of skin sliding over tile, and that breathless, reedy cry wasn't a cheer.

"What are you doing?" he yells, stupidly and grabs the nearest arm, but his fingers slide lewdly over wet, slick skin and he doesn't even know who he's touching. He tries to push them aside, pale bodies, dark bodies, but they seem to many, suddenly. They're all naked and soap-slippery, and when he gets stuck between Lucas and Gabe, it's like a fucking orgy must be, heaving bodies and skin everywhere; he swears he feels a dick slap against his thigh, even, and it might have been hard. Then an elbow knocks his head to the side and he sees Casey there, pushed against the wall, pinned there and the look in his eyes is surprised, like he really didn't know. How could he not? Stan wonders when Gabe gets up close and bangs Casey against the wall.

Casey's head bounces off the tile wall and his eyes go out of focus for a while. Stan's fingers slide numbly over Gabe's flank, and someone, Duvall maybe, shoves him aside, and he's closed out of the circle.

He hears Gabe say, "So you don't forget," in a voice that's thick with rage, and Stan sees him aim a kick, and then everyone's backing off a little because Casey hit the floor with a wet, sickening thud. Stan can see his white skin shine in glimpses between a row of hairy ankles.

Then there's blood in the swirls of water on the floor and Stan turns and runs out of the shower room.

There's no one in the locker room; how the fuck can there be no one in there? This school is amazing that way. You want to beat someone up, there's _always_ a quiet spot to go; people are helpful, they'll turn away without a word and leave.

He yanks his jeans on viciously, no underwear and damp skin and he probably scrapes a good gash on his thigh with the zipper. He can't find his shirt, so he pulls on his jacket and runs barefoot up the stairs with the cheering still ringing in his ears. The denim chafes at the wet, soft skin between his legs - real fucking lucky he didn't get his dick caught in the zipper.

He skids to a halt at the top of the stairs and realises he has no idea where he was going.

He opens his mouth to yell, "HELP!" Mad, but he can't fucking _think_. Now that he's up in the cool air, he realises how way out of the league of normally fucked up that was, that they were out for serious blood--

"Stan?" someone says next to him and he jumps backward and somehow stubs his toe on the gritty floor. Bright burst of pain and he hisses and skips and it's Delilah next to him, wide-eyed with worry, leaning closer. Right behind her, inexplicably, Zeke Tyler of all people.

"Fuck, fuck," Stan mutters, "man, that hurt." They look like they've been waiting for someone. Delilah must be waiting for Gabe to be done. Who the hell ever knows why Zeke does anything? Stan doesn't, can't care, either, because his toe hurts something fierce and his brain is stuck in a rut on the horror downstairs. "--it's Gabe. Gabe and Casey, and I think--" and that was all he has time for before they push him aside and race down the stairs. Like it means something.

He runs after them.

He gets there as they do, he's already panic-fast and they're just getting started. He doesn't get it, though, Delilah worried about Gabe. She should know better, know that Casey can't get the drop on him twice.

He crashes against the wall just next to the shower room door and gets a good look just as Gabe takes a step backward and drops his hands to his dick. For a second, Stan's brain flashes to Jodie Foster again, but then Gabe arches his back and lets fly, and it's not like a gangbang, it's like a wolverine pissing on its kill. The rest of them, too, like some crazy fucking pact, and he hears Casey crying in there, thick, choking sobs.

"What the FUCK?" Delilah screams just beside him, and her voice - shrill, loud, _female_ \- cuts through the jeering and the rush of the showers like a blade.

And just like that, it's over.

They lose interest in Casey one by one, dominoes falling over. They back off and clap their hands over their dicks, detour around Delilah without looking at her. Except Gabe, who walks by unashamed. He's seen her naked too, Stan thinks, more bitter than he thought he'd be - and asks Delilah, "What are you doing here, baby?"

"Get the fuck out, Gabe," she says. Her voice is strange and soft, and Stan almost thinks he misheard. Almost, but then Gabe backs away from her as if she's suddenly grown radioactive, and Delilah--

Delilah has never cared about people getting beaten up. Ever. Stan _knows_ her, and she is a perfect ten on the Don't-Give-A-Fuck-Unless-It's-Gucci scale, but she's kneeling in the bloody water nonetheless. It's gone quiet again.

Then he hears Zeke's voice, a throaty growl now: "Get the fuck out." He almost obeys before he realises Zeke's talking to Gabe. Zeke stands three or four good inches taller than Gabe, more with his shoes on, and Gabe's naked. No contest. Gabe seems to have come down to Earth now; Stan sees him throw a glance back into the shower room, a worried glance. A _did-I-go-too-far?_ glance.

_Fucking right, you did_, Stan thinks, _Psycho_, and then Gabe is gone and it's just the four of them. Stan stands barefoot in his uncomfortably damp jeans and stares. The smell of piss has reached his nostrils, sudden and sharp. Delilah is wearing pants today, grey pinstriped ones, but he's not appreciating her ass like he might some other day if she crouched down like that in front of him. Instead, he watches her knees and the dark stain of blood and water creeping upwards as the fabric absorbs it.

He's weaving like he's drunk - shock? What? what the fuck? - when he walks the six feet or so of wet floor between them.

Casey is curled up in a fetal position, his hands thrown over his face, and there's blood, and the smell, and he's not sobbing, Stan realises, he's choking, snapping for breath. Delilah is touching him. Stan stares dumbly at them. She's running her fingers over his side, all over his side. Not gingerly, not like someone touching a stranger. At all. Not at all; she's touching him with knowing hands. "Casey," she whispers, and she might be crying, but Stan refuses to believe it. "Casey, Casey, baby--"

Casey makes a sound like his lungs have stopped working entirely, a sort of deep, rattling groan, and Stan comes to a little - fuck, it's bad, it's really bad - and crouches down beside them, feeling helpless, but he has to do _something_. "Is he--" he starts and Delilah turns on him, snarls "Don't fucking touch him," and pushes him, hard and fast, hard enough to knock him over.

He just barely manages not to slam the back of his head on the floor, and when he gets up again, she's already turned back to Casey. "Casey, talk to me," she whispers, softly like a lover. Soft as a mother.

Then Zeke's crouching next to her, his hand gentle on her shoulder. His voice is hard though, with a sharp edge that makes chills twist their roots into Stan's gut. "We'll get them, Case," he says and Delilah glances at him and Stan tries to forget he saw the look that passed between them. "We'll fucking kill them. Baby, it's gonna be the day."

His voice has an edge, but it's low and sing-song and _seductive_. Stan's head is spinning. Delilah's stroking Casey's filthy skin and Zeke chants softly, and Stan wants to get the fuck out of here now, because this is somehow _worse_: Zeke's voice over Casey's rasping breaths, "Think about that; I can do it for you, you can do it yourself, you want to get them back, and they're gonna pay. You can piss on their fucking corpses, Casey," and he's tugging at Casey, gently tugging him towards them and Delilah's hands help, carefully.

Stan takes a step backwards. He feels like he's been doing nothing today, all damn day, but backing away. _He was begging for it_, his treacherous brain tells him. _Signed his death warrant in spit_. The three of them have closed together; grown together into some fucked up organism and Zeke whispers and Casey sobs and Delilah is right there, her hands bloody now, her pants sopping wet and ruined.

*

Stan stares and takes another step backwards. He doesn't even know where to start. He has no idea. None at all.

"Stan," Delilah says without looking up. She doesn't raise her voice. "Call 911."

"Wha--" he starts, but then his brain catches up. "Oh. Yeah. Okay, sure," and he's still babbling as he turns and runs.

*

When the paramedics load Casey into the ambulance, everything already looks cleaner, clinical - the neck support, the gloved fingers taking his pulse, the white gurney and Casey's clean. Just a trickle of fresh blood still running down his face. Stan can't tell how bad it is. Bad. Broken bones bad. He doesn't think he's ever seen anyone quite this fucked up before, unless he counts roadkill, but at least Casey doesn't smell like piss anymore. There was no sign of that when the paramedics hit the shower room. Zeke and Delilah took care of that.

The index finger on Casey's right hand is jutting at a strange angle and Stan can hear the crack of thin bones breaking, the sound playing over and over somewhere in his head. Whoever did that had to really stomp to break a finger with a bare foot. Really mean it.

He feels suddenly, violently sick. Like he's been sick all along and only now has his stomach bothered to tell him. He falls to his hands and knees and barfs on the mangy school lawn, with the sound of breaking bones playing on a loop in his head; breaking bones and the slap of punches on wet skin and that breathless cry. Casey didn't scream for help once. Stan looks away from his recycled lunch and thinks he knows why.

He hocks up stringy strands of spit onto the lumpy grass, trying to stop his stomach from heaving again, waits it out. Damp is seeping through his jeans and he thinks about Delilah kneeling on the wet tiles. He still can't wrap his head around that. His brain stops dead: Delilah in-- Delilah-- Delilah in--

He tries another way, tries to go around it, through Zeke. Delilah and Zeke? That makes about as much sense. Now, Zeke and Casey... that's not as hard. Stan remembers a day months ago, being almost run down by a fleeing Casey and finding Zeke in the bathroom, smug as a cat full of canary. Smug and flushed. He'd looked well-laid, Stan realises now.

Still doesn't get him to Delilah and he just drops the thought and staggers to his feet.

"Stan?" someone says behind him and he almost falls on his ass in the puddle of vomit. Principal Drake stands stern-faced in a suit, on the wet grass. "I'd like a word with you."

"Not now," he mutters and spits again. "I feel sick." He looks around wildly for an escape. He doesn't feel nauseated right now, but sick, definitely. Sick deep down, and he can't think. Can't decide what to say yet. He's still only wearing jeans and his coat. He wonders if he cut his feet on the gravel walking out here. He's standing on something uncomfortable now, but it's faint; his feet are going beyond cold into numb. He doesn't know why he's in such a state. Casey's nobody special.

He's standing on a broken twig. He steps away from it too fast and almost falls over.

He can't tell if she's concerned or annoyed. "Shock, Stan?" she says, her voice perfectly dry. "You were there. Who did this?"

He stares at her. Her makeup is perfect, not one hair is out of place on her head. He can't think of what to say. He was there. Who did it? His friends did it?

"We really need to talk," she says.

"I'm gonna go, um." His head feels light, like gravity has lost its grip on him. He's not sure what's down and what's up. Then he takes a few steps and everything slots right back again and he walking briskly past her. "I need to drink," he mutters. It's true; he needs to wash away the taste of vomit. He needs to stop thinking about Casey's head bouncing against the tiles or he'll just start retching again.

He meets Zeke and Delilah on the stairs and forgets everything about blowing chunks in front of the principal.

"Delilah--" he starts and cuts off when she turns to him, her face white and her eyes utterly vicious.

"One more fucking word and you're on the list, too," she hisses and he sees that she _has_ cried; her mascara's run just a little. He hasn't seen her cry since fourth grade.

"Hey, whoa," he says, lifts his hands, palms out. "I didn't--"

"Yeah, exactly," she says coldly and walks on, and now he realises that she was holding Zeke's hand the whole time, and he just wants to go find a dark corner somewhere and curl up and bang his head against the wall for a while.

Instead, he rinses out his mouth and goes down to get his clothes. He has mudstains on his knees and his feet are numb.

He's in his car on his way home before he remembers the principal. _Tomorrow_, he thinks and turns up the radio.


	14. Scream

"No," Delilah says. Her voice is a little cracked, and her eyes are wet, even though she hasn't allowed herself to really cry. She won't, Zeke thinks, not until she's cleaned off her eye makeup, at least. She's been pacing back and forth in front of the car, but now she's right in front of him and won't back down. "No, you fucker."

Zeke likes this kind of anger. It's cold and rational. It feels like steel in his throat and chest.

Delilah thumps him on the chest and says "no" a couple more times. He's already thinking about his gun. There are things people can get away with; pissing on Zeke's _(petfriendbrother)_ boyfriend isn't one of them. He can feel the gun in his hand already, even though it's locked in the glove compartment of the GTO.

"Don't be a moron," Delilah says. "You're not gonna be much good for us in jail."

He looks down at her. "Who says I'm going to jail?"

She makes a little frustrated gesture - _men!_ Her hair is still damp; she put it under a shower to wash the blood-and-piss water out of it. Her pants are still soaked in it, same as Zeke's jeans. She doesn't seem to notice the cold, though.

"Then I'm getting his parents," he says and imagines lifting his hand with the gun heavy and still hot, ready to go again.

"Why don't you shoot your own parents," she mutters. That might have hurt yesterday, before all this shit. Before he'd walked into the ER and Casey's dad met him in the hall with his face contorted with unfocused rage. "You," he'd said and even pointed at Zeke, poked him in the chest with a finger, "you're behind this."

No sign of Casey, just drawn curtains and nurses flitting around. Casey's dad, broad-shouldered and compact in a way Casey will never be, had tried to push Zeke back towards the doors. "You come near him again-- You're going down." He had leaned in closer, close enough that Zeke had seen that his eyes were bloodshot and not nearly as blue as Casey's. "You're going down," he repeated, not sounding half as threatening as he probably thought he did.

Delilah's hands had been on Zeke's shoulders then too, like now, stopping him from going too far.

Zeke had heard crying behind the curtains and thought it was Casey's mother. Nothing from Casey. He'd wanted to ask if Casey was okay, but he hadn't thought Casey's dad would be very forthcoming, not with the way he hissed, "Get out and take _her_ with you," twisting his mouth at Delilah.

Zeke had spat on the floor in front of him and walked out. He'd been thinking about Gabe, anyway.

"We just gonna sit here, then?" he asks Delilah now. She's up in his face, a wildcat with smudged makeup and wet hair.

Her fingers are a little unsteady on his face. She's not as together as she's pretending to be, he thinks. But she's got the steel under her skin, too. Her lips brush against his when she says, "Let's go see Stan."

*

She's on a whole other level of sly than Casey. Casey, in fact, wouldn't know how to be sly if he had a gun in his face. His idea of a tactical manoeuvre is putting himself in the path of a fist. Delilah inches closer, stroking Zeke's face, soothing him like someone would a nervous horse. He thinks about Casey and wants to shake her off, but he knows she wants what he wants - she doesn't let people get away with anything ever. If she were his sister, she would have destroyed his mother.

She's not his sister, though, so he pulls her closer and shuts her up with his mouth while he tries to think. Stan, Stan, what the fuck do they need Stan for? She makes a muffled sound and bites his lip, scratches his neck and finally wraps herself around him.

It's windy and he's pushed against his car in the hospital parking lot, and all the steel is still in him even though the rest is melting. He could just swing Delilah around and fuck her right here, against the red stripe on the hood.

He shoves her away for a second and she hisses at him. He opens his eyes and there's Stan, standing by his car fifteen feet away, staring with his mouth open.

Delilah goes from vicious sexkitten to all business in 0.4 seconds as she turns around and catches sight of him.

*

"Stan," she says. "We need to talk to you."

He looks a little surprised. Fair enough, Zeke thinks, she did cut him down mercilessly only a few hours earlier. She'd still been raw then; none of this calculating anger. Her nails had been cutting into Zeke's hand hard enough to leave little marks he still feels.

"Have you talked to anyone?" she asks now. Stan looks like hell; sallow and hollow-eyed, like he's the one with piss in his wounds.

"Drake wants to talk to me," he says.

"Don't," Delilah says. She moves towards him, walking softly. Zeke waits.

"The cops are asking around, too, I guess," Stan says. "And I thought--" He actually winces and swallows. "I thought Casey was your friend. And I saw what happened."

"Lie," Delilah says. "We're gonna lie. We don't know what happened. Casey doesn't know what happened."

"But--"

"We'll take care of it," she says, softly. Her hair is drying; the wind whips it around her face. Dry leaves skitter over the pavement.

Zeke finds a cigarette and lights it. Stan squirms and looks doubtful, doubtful and curious at the same time. Zeke remembers one time in his house, Delilah flat on her back on his bed with Casey between her legs, Zeke in the chair next to the bed, watching - she'd turned to him with glassy eyes and flushed face and said, "Can't believe I wasted two years with Stan."

He grins around his cigarette. Stan shrugs awkwardly at Delilah and mutters, "Okay, okay."

Delilah stares after him for a while as he walks away. "He can't lie to save his life." She turns back to Zeke. "Whatever. Everyone else will lie better."

It strikes Zeke then that Stan will be allowed to see Casey. Oh, that stings. The need to see Casey - touch him, talk to him, get him the fuck away from his blockhead parents - is swelling like a spring flood.

"Let's go," he says and barely waits for Delilah to get her legs in the car and the door closed before peeling out of the lot.

*

She heads for the shower as soon as they get back to his place, and he follows her and stands in the door, watching her pull her clothes off quickly and angrily. She throws them on the floor, even though she's usually so particular about clothes that she doesn't let Casey or Zeke pull at them or wad them up. "Not the Donna Karan!" she'll say and push them away and pick up the shirt.

He thinks about joining her. The bathroom, though, makes him nervous. The cold tiled wall and the sound of running water. Zeke backs out of there and hopes he's not turning into a neurotic old lady.

Casey never said no; uncomfortable bathroom sex was fine by him, fine enough that he gasped hoarsely and spread his legs wider when Zeke pushed him against the cold tiles, fine enough that he clawed at the wall and came with a shaky moan.

Zeke goes to his room and takes off his still-damp jeans. The shirt, too. It has stains on the front, brown in the low light. Casey's bled on Zeke's clothes before. Maybe on this same shirt. If he got an ultraviolet light in here, he might find traces of old stains.

He stands in the middle of his room in nothing but boxers; skin chilly but hot on the inside.

He turns and sweeps the books off his shelf. They land on the floor in a heap, making unsatisfying soft thumps on the carpet. He sucks in a breath and stands still again, waits for the rage to boil down. He doesn't do blind fury. He doesn't do stupid. If he had Gabe or any of the other fucks here, he'd castrate them first and kill them only when they were begging for it.

He doesn't do rage. He walks slowly through the hall towards the living room. The shower is still running. He tries to picture Delilah there, her wet skin and the hair in a glossy black cascade down her back. He could go there and put his hands on the swell of her hips. She might bitch him out, but she doesn't say no much either, when it comes down to it.

Instead, he goes into the living room and looks around at the quiet dusty nothing of it. His mother hasn't sent anyone to collect her things; he doesn't think she will. The stereo is a Bang &amp; Olufsen; a discreetly outlandish and overpriced piece of Scandinavian junk he never uses. It makes a good, solid noise when he pushes it over. It hits the metal of the edge of the coffee table. Sharp bits of plastic and glass slash at his bare legs.

He backs off. He's never felt like hurting himself, not once in his life, and he's not starting with any of that shit now. He pushes down a few vases from the bookshelf. The glasses in the bar make cheerful noises when they smash against the wall.

It takes him a while to overturn the bookcase; it spans the entire wall, a lumbering giant of solid mahogany and heavy glass. As it falls, he steps back and watches the glass doors shatter and the shelves dig deep tracks in the carpet.

He's not sure he actually hears it fall. He does hear Delilah's voice, though she seems faint and distant until he starts paying attention. "Whoah," she says first. She's usually more articulate. Then, a little louder, "Feel better?"

"No," he says.

She's wearing his bathrobe. She's wrapped his blue and brown towel around her hair. She has a toothbrush here, but no towels. He stares at her. Her presence seems suddenly too familiar; like she's moved in here when he wasn't paying attention, made herself comfortable in his nest without asking. They both have - there's one of Casey's ugly button-downs in the easy chair next to the ruined stereo. When Zeke concentrates for a second, he remembers that he pulled it off Casey himself, one day a few weeks ago. Because it was ugly; he told Casey it was hideous and peeled it off him. Casey slapped his hands away at first, said Zeke had to be possessed by Delilah or something, but then he let Zeke do it. It didn't stop there, of course, but Casey forgot to put that shirt back on after.

Delilah crosses the room, stepping carefully around the junk on the floor, avoiding the scattered glass on the carpet. Her toenails are painted dark red. She has small feet.

"We'll put this back together," she says when she's close enough that he can see that her eyes are red-rimmed. He tries to imagine her crying in the shower, but that seems like such a Casey thing to do, not like Delilah at all.

He looks down at her feet again, and the fallen bookcase beast next to her. "What, this one?" he asks.

"That was it for the comforting words, though," she says, ignoring him. He reaches out and pulls the towel off her head. Her hair is warm and damp underneath. It smells very familiar; so far, she hasn't brought any of her own shampoo.

He knots his fist in the wet silk of her hair. She curls her mouth in a smile so dry it's just a suggestion of amusement. "Fucking shit up didn't work," she says.

"No," he says. He's cold. She looks tired, even after showering.

"Fucking isn't gonna work either," she says, but she doesn't try to pull away. Her skin's warm and glowing under the robe, unblemished. Casey is careless with Zeke, scratches and bites - fair enough, of course, as Zeke never takes much care with Casey - but Delilah's sacred ground. No scratching, no biting, not even the tiniest lovebite. Casey never even squeezes her arm too hard.

Zeke tugs at her hair, tilts her head backwards. She bares her teeth, and he pushes the robe off her shoulders. It falls to the floor in a damp heap next to the towel. "Tug a little harder and kiss your balls goodbye," she murmurs and he lets her hair go, catches her by the arm instead, pulls her closer, spins her around. She's agile and light-boned, he can lift her and jam her against the wall with no problem. She hisses at him between her teeth. Her hair falls heavy-wet over his face. He looks up and she's there to kiss. She's using him right back for distraction.

It doesn't work; this is something Casey should be around for. Delilah is soft and yielding most everywhere. It's good, the way she accommodates him, the way fucking her is no hassle at all, but Zeke also likes the hassle of Casey.

She locks her legs around his waist and arches against him and says, "If you don't kill Gabe, I will."

He holds her against the wall with his hips and gets a hand in her hair again. He pulls her face towards him, just a little rougher than she likes. "Maybe Casey wants to." She smiles, a quick flash of teeth against his mouth.

*

The phone rings. Zeke realises he must have fallen asleep, because he doesn't really hear it until Delilah hits him in the face with her elbow, crawling over him to reach it. It's almost dark in his bedroom. His brain feels slow and lazy.

"Why are you calling here?" Delilah says, her voice shrill. She's lying across his chest, her hair falling into his face. "What?" she snaps, annoyed now. "Stan, you fucking trog, what the fuck--"

Zeke pulls her and the phone closer to him and hears Stan's voice, "--be a fucking bitch, Delilah. I'm just warning you, the shit's hitting the fan."

"What's going on?" Zeke asks them both. Delilah slaps her free hand over his mouth and yells, "What the fuck did you tell them?" into the receiver.

"Nothing," Stan says sullenly. "But they were already after Zeke, I guess Casey musta told them--"

"Bullshit, Stan. Fucking bullshit. Casey isn't gonna say anything about Zeke."

There's a pause and Zeke pulls Delilah's hand off his mouth and takes a deep breath and tries to think anything besides, _You're so fucking dead, Stan._

"Casey was sedated. He pitched a fit about some exams and they had to give him a shot. The cops are gonna bust Zeke, I'm fucking _telling_ you. I don't get it, I thought--"

"What did you tell them?" Delilah repeats. Zeke thinks, _you're so fucking dead, Stan, _and nothing else.

"I thought it was about GABE, okay? You didn't fucking TELL me it wasn't about fucking Ga--" He's cut short when Delilah hangs up the phone.

*

"Fuck," she says.

"I'm gonna kill him," Zeke says.

"No, you're not, asshole. He warned us." She gets up, paces around the room. "We need to think. We need to see Casey."

They had to sedate Casey. He tries to think of tests they'd have done. What would they have done to him? Casey'd been beat up, broken and dirty. Zeke hadn't been able to wash him off completely because soap on his fucked up hand or the gouge on his side would have hurt too much and Casey was already sobbing brokenly, relentlessly.   
Sharp edges everywhere in that shower room, and Casey'd been thrown bare-skinned and helpless against them.

He should have nailed Gabe right there. Gabe had almost smiled, he thinks. Nervously, because Delilah was there, but still fucking cocky.

"--maybe call someone, I don't know. What would they be looking for? Why you-- They must have talked to Miss Burke, or Casey might have, I don't know, I don't know. He might have said something if he was drugged--" Delilah's saying. She's forgotten that she's naked. The curtains aren't drawn. Zeke sits on the bed and thinks about his getaway stash and his fast car. Doesn't work, though. Casey's stuck in the hospital, drugged up, and no one to watch out for him except his worthless parents and goddamn Stan Rosado who cares about nothing but Delilah. "Come ON, Zeke, wake the fuck up."

"I'm up," Zeke says and gets up. It's ten PM. "We have to see him."

"I don't think visiting hours--"

"Don't think that's gonna stop me," he says. The trick to getting into places is just to walk right in like you're supposed to be there. Zeke's done _that_ before.

She has almost all her clothes on when she stops dead, her blouse unbuttoned and her feet still bare.

"Did Casey stay here last night, after I left?" she asks, like it matters, eagerly.

"Yeah," he says. He'd woken up under a warm, softly snuffling Caseyblanket, the sun peeking hesitantly through the curtains.

"Did you fuck him?"

Casey in the morning is agreeable and doesn't bite or scratch like he might once he's really awake. Zeke allows him a second of sappy nostalgia and thinks, _making love_. He didn't expect to hurt himself thinking that.

*

"Fuck," Delilah says again. She's buttoning her shirt. She's lost the wild-eyed look now; she's businesslike again. Zeke likes her calculating little mind. It's a lot like his. Zeke feels sorry for any cops who want to ask him stupid questions. His hands want to do something, make someone hurt.

*

"Maybe we shouldn't go there," Delilah says. "They might be looking for you. They could be on their way here."

"Let them come," Zeke says and knots his hands into fists, to test them. He needs to see Casey right now. He might walk through some people to see Casey.

"Don't be stupid," she says. "You have a fucking drug lab in here. You have an unlicensed gun, you have fuck knows what--" She looks scared. Delilah is never afraid.

He thinks for a moment. There's a logical sequence of events here. Somewhere along the line, something went wrong. Gabe, of course. He should never have been allowed. Zeke has to stop himself from feeling guilty about not protecting Casey. No way to know Gabe was going to go batshit.

"How did they get my name?" he asks. He doesn't wait for Delilah to answer that. "Casey's fucking parents, of course." There's no way Casey would have pointed the finger. No way.

"Good to know you're with us," she says dryly, but she still looks scared. He realises he's forgotten that he's naked, too. He looks for something clean to wear - jeans, t-shirt, a sweater with some rips that look artfully thought out but are really just rips. It's an old sweater.

"I'm gonna clean out the lab," he says. There isn't that much to clean. Business has been slow lately. He's been slow. Drug-dealing for thrills loses its charm when he's getting laid on a regular basis.

He carries the mouse cage up to his room. A guy can have pet mice, nothing weird about that. Delilah doesn't like them, but Casey does - he always looks a little worried when Zeke's handling them, as if he doesn't trust Zeke not to kill them on a whim. Casey is nice to small, furry animals.

Zeke holds Burton and Clarissa in his cupped hands. Their whiskers tickle his fingers. He could give them to Casey as a get-well present. Casey has a well-developed sense of irony; he'd appreciate the gesture on more than one level.

He wonders where Casey keeps his negatives. Not here. Not in his room at home. Locker, probably. All that home-made porn, stuffed under a copy of _America: History of a Nation_. It's almost sad. There are no paper copies anymore, Zeke thinks, or at least none that he's seen. Casey might have a few stashed somewhere. That wouldn't be surprising; Casey keeps things close to his chest.

He puts down the mice. Clarissa nibbles at the loose skin in the fold between his thumb and index. He lets her. He tries to decide whether now is a good time to panic or not. He doesn't feel screwed yet, but it's in the air. He'd like to think he'd have enough sense to get the fuck outta Dodge if push comes to shove, but right now his brain is repeating _notwithoutCaseynotwithoutCasey_ like a fucking stuck record.

"You need to get your head out of your ass," Delilah says from the door. Zeke jumps and the mice skitter away from his hand.

"Give me some fucking time to brood."

"Right, you can brood your way right to jail." He pushes past her into the hall, finds his jacket, car keys. She follows him. "Where are you going?"

"Hospital," he says.

*

He's leaning against the car door with a cigarette when Delilah comes back out, flustered and tight-faced. "They wouldn't even tell me how he was. Fucking cow." She snatches his half-smoked cigarette out of his hand and takes a few deep drags.

"What?" he says. "I'm going in there."

"It's a police case, fucker. And no visitors after eight PM. His parents weren't even there anymore."

That doesn't surprise Zeke. They need their beauty sleep, who cares if their kid's on his fucking death bed.

Delilah has her hands on him again, holding him back. This is becoming a habit. The hospital stands brightly lit and mocking, hiding Casey somewhere inside. Locked in, and Zeke and Delilah locked out.

Zeke has a stupid idea. But what the hell. "Hit me," he says.

"What?" she says.

"Hard, come on. I need blood."

She stares at him blankly, until he sees the lights go on. "That's the dumbest fucking idea," she says.

"Yeah," he says and leans towards her. "Go on, do your worst."

She shakes her head, rolls her eyes and he doesn't think she's gonna do it and then she does.

His head doesn't even move. He rubs his jaw. Nothing. "Christ, woman. Casey hits harder than that. And you have to aim for something that'll bleed."

She swings again, but either she's got the world's weakest right hook or she's just not trying.

"I'm not fucking bleeding," he says.

"Then you hit me instead," she says.

"No!" It comes out almost like a plea, strangely, and Zeke wonders just how deep under his skin Casey has gotten. Casey would throw himself in front of a train before he hurt Delilah. Casey would suck Gabe's dick with a smile before he hurt Delilah.

That thought slices deep and when Delilah says, "What, the age of chivalry isn't over? You really are one fucked up little--" he says, "Okay. But it's your call."

She sets her jaw. "Do it."

"It's gonna hurt," he says. Thinks, _gonna make Gabe pay for this one, too. It all adds up._

"I know what it feels like, asshole. You did it before, remember?" she says, but she's pale in the lamplight. The parking lot is almost empty. The hospital shines bright as ever. He hardly remembers that night. He doesn't remember what it felt like to hit her. "It's not hard, you hit Casey all the time."

He holds her face between his hands and kisses her. Casey will be pissed off, he thinks. Kisses her good, and when her eyes are still a little glazed, he steps back and taps her, two quick jabs at her mouth; not hard enough to break teeth, but enough to split her lip.

She bends over, curls up around herself and holds her hands over her face. He stands back, rubbing his knuckles absently.

"Fucking fuck," she mumbles through her hands. There's blood on her fingers. Her eyes glitter. She is unsteady on her feet so he clamps an arm around her shoulder and half-carries her towards the ER doors.

*

The cut on her lip needs only one stitch from a suspicious, glowering intern. Delilah looks perky enough when she says, "Car door. I wasn't looking." Zeke keeps his hands in his pockets and tries to look like a doting boyfriend. The ER is brightly lit and busy with its worried little half life.

"Yeah," Delilah says when the intern asks her if she's feeling dizzy.

"Stay here," he says. "Just rest for a while."

"Are you okay?" Zeke asks once he's gone.

"Never better," she says. Her lip is swollen under the Band-Aid. "I must look like shit."

"Yup," he says and helps her up.

*

Hospitals are mazes of corridors and closed doors, but the ER isn't that big and they find Casey's room within ten minutes of dodging nurses and doctors and pretending they belong.

They stop in the door, both struck silent for once. The room is half-lit by streetlamps outside the window. Casey is a dark, silent shape on the bed. Zeke stares at his profile, the unmistakable sharp little nose.

They hardly breathe.

Casey moves a little and Zeke turns on the light.

"Hi," he says. He has an urge to pull Casey out of the bed and get him out of here right now. But Casey is tiny and pale and there's a bandage on his head, a cast on his hand.

"Hi," Delilah says, still a little slurred. Casey turns his head and they go to him. Delilah kisses him with just the barest hint of a wince. "How are you?" she asks automatically. Stupid fucking question, Zeke thinks.

"Only hurts when I laugh," Casey croaks, as if he's lost the use of his voice, as if he hasn't spoken in days. Then he blinks and lifts his undamaged hand. "What happened to you?"

Zeke has his hands in his pockets again.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Delilah says. She actually giggles, an alien sound from Delilah. It sounds just on the edge of hysterical in this silent room. "We're undercover as ER patients."

"They wouldn't let us in," Zeke says.

"We had to come up with Plan B," Delilah adds.

"Delilah hits like a girl, though."

"She hit herself?" Casey says incredulously. Wishful thinking: a faint rosy blush on his cheeks, a little life in his eyes.

"I hit her," Zeke says and Casey turns his head away. "I figured you'd be pissed, but we were out of options."

"This isn't Lethal Weapon," Casey mutters, but there's a little twitch around the corners of his mouth. Zeke gives up on self-control and touches him, ignores the row of stitches running up his cheek, kisses him with as much restraint as he has left. Casey makes a tiny noise. His face is cold; only the inside of his mouth is hot.

He feels Delilah's hand light on his neck. He doesn't want to back off, and it's time to just spell it out: he's so hooked there's no way out of this. He straightens up and Delilah's hands slide under his shirt briefly, a reminder of her existence. Hooked all the way, tied up like a roped steer.

Casey moves his shoulders uncomfortably. His mouth is wet. "We're so fucked," he says quietly.


	15. Whisper

Casey didn't lie to the cops: he really couldn't remember much. Now it's starting to drizzle back into his memory bit by bit. It's the concussion, the doctor had told his parents.

His father doesn't meet his eyes anymore. He looks past him, at the walls, at the desk, out the window, when he asks the same old questions: "Who?" and "How?" and "What did you do?"

"I don't remember," Casey lies and tries to stop thinking. If he stops thinking about his headache - which comes and goes like the tide, briefly staved off by codeine, then swelling again - he instead becomes too aware of the other aches: his mangled hand, his ribs, the gash on his cheek.

His father doesn't look like he believes anything Casey says. His father has gone into permanent denial mode, Casey thinks.

"You'll feel better when you're home," his mother said in the car on the way. _Define 'better'_, Casey wanted to say. He'd been okay in the hospital, cut off from everything and floating in a grey haze of hospital food and painkillers and that familiar-strange pungent smell of disinfectant. His parents had forgotten to bring him clothes, so he'd had to walk to the car wearing the skimpy little nightie, paper slippers and his father's long coat. And he'd thought he'd been through the worst humiliation already.

He turns his head and stares at another wall instead. The pictures by his desk are gone. He'd added one of Zeke and Delilah smoking in Zeke's car, their eyes intent on something outside the windows, the smoke both separating and connecting them. Now there's just an empty wall, a few stray flecks of blu-tack. He suspects his father. "How could something like this happen?" his mother asks, wringing her hands, but his father scowls and asks, again, "Who was it? What were you fighting about?"

Still in denial. Not a word about the other things. Casey wonders if his father would be relieved or even angrier if he told him the whole truth.

Casey doesn't know the whole truth. Explaining the little bit of truth he knows is already too much. It has all bled together in his head. The woman who asked him questions was gentle and careful and misunderstood everything. He stopped even trying after a while, just said "No" to everything. The sedative was already starting to wear off, but his head was still heavy and there were grey areas in his field of vision, little blurs of nothingness.

"Can you tell me what happened?" _No._ "Are you sexually active?" _No._ "Do you have a girlfriend?" _No._ "Boyfriend?" _No._ "Have you had consensual anal sex in the last seventy-two hours?" _No._

He wasn't lying. He doesn't think he remembered just then. He remembers now, though. In the morning. Zeke driving him to school after. Delilah smiling at him in the hall outside English class, secretly.

He misses the pictures. If they were there, he wouldn't have to stare at the empty wall to avoid looking at his parents. Maybe he wouldn't feel like crying. His father already thinks he's the pinnacle of pathetic, no need to rub it in, for fuck's sake, but the waterworks turn on without asking him. It's PTSD, he thinks and doesn't try to wipe his face. He keeps forgetting the cast on his hand. He's hit himself in the face a couple of times already.

"Oh, honey," his mom says. He thinks he'd like a hug. _Mom._ He could lean his face against her cardigan. It's been awhile. At some point, he got too old. She doesn't touch him much anymore.

"The cops will be back," his father says. "You start telling the truth now. We don't need anymore trouble." He looks like he wants to pace or maybe make angry gestures. Casey lies still, wet face and running nose.

"Don't be ashamed," his mother says. She's trying to smile reassuringly. "It's not your fault."

Casey chokes on laughter and coughs. It feels like his ribcage is tied up with forge-hot iron bands. He misses the hospital and the nurses who didn't care about him, just came in every hour to ask him stupid questions like his middle name and his address. He kept forgetting at first, but it wore off after a while. Nothing wrong with him now. He can remember a lot more than he'd like to.

They don't seem to be about to leave his room. He wants to sleep. His mother wants to comfort, but she's so bad at it. She's afraid to touch him, like she can see something dangerous and filthy in him. Maybe she thinks he doesn't want her to. His father wants answers.

Zeke and Delilah didn't ask him anything at all past, "how are you?" They stayed until the nurse caught on and told them to leave or she'd call the cops.

The strangest thing: when they first showed up, he didn't know who they were. He hadn't thought about them at all until then. Who were these people? Then Delilah bent over him and kissed him, and he almost heard the _click_ when the memories fell into place.

Hi, Zeke. Hi, Delilah. Please take me home. He didn't ask.

"I'm going to the bathroom," he says and pushes himself up. His legs feel rubbery and weak but he can walk without bumping into things. His head is spinning just a little.

"Do you need--" his mother starts and frustration he didn't know he had boils up.

"I can take a fucking piss on my own," he snaps at her. She recoils. She's afraid of him. He's pretty sure his father hates him. Worthless foul-mouthed cry-baby fag.

He looks in the mirror and feels brave for doing it. He's still crying, even though he doesn't feel it. His eyes just water all on their own, blurry blue-black-purple-rimmed. When he's this pale, his eyes seem to grow until he looks like an anime cartoon of a boy, paper-white skin with bright purple blotches, too bright even to look like bruises, a crow's feet row of stitches on his cheek. "Hi, freak," he says to the mirror.

There's still blood in his piss and he fights the nausea desperately. Throwing up would be bad. Just breathing is bad enough; vomiting would be like having his guts torn out through his throat. He flips down the toilet lid and sits on it, dizzy.

"You're relatively well off," the doctor told him. "Nothing that won't go away. With luck, the cut on your face won't even scar visibly." Too bad, because he might look really badass with a scar. The only fun part of this shit. _I went down fighting._ Maybe, _You should see the other guy._

The other guy's probably hanging out with his friends, bragging about scores and fucking Delilah. Eternal torment. Casey didn't even get in a good kick.

He might actually vomit now, so he slides to the floor and assumes the position. The wet-white porcelain and the faint smell of piss don't make him feel any better, but he holds it down.

Knock on the door. "Casey?" His mother, worried.

"Casey, open the door." His father, angry.

"Go away," he mutters. They can't hear him. More knocking. He spits in the bowl and gets up and opens the door. "I'm okay," he says.

*

Real cops talked to him in the morning. Not the nice nurse with her soft voice and questions he couldn't answer. These were cops through and through, detectives. O'Halloran and Merkel. O'Halloran had Irish red hair and small, sharp eyes. Merkel had a forehead permanently set in a frown. "Have you had trouble with the same student before?"

"No," Casey said, a lie even though he wasn't sure which student they meant. He kept missing the questions, though, like they were spoken in another room and he had to strain his ears to hear. It was easy to just drift.

"A name keeps coming up in our interviews. Zeke Tyler. Anything you can tell us?"

"What?"

They repeated everything. They weren't letting him go. He was on his back, floating on painkillers and they kept asking and asking. He remembers feeling puzzled because they kept talking about Zeke. Zeke. Zeke Zeke. Zeke had been too late.

The next time they asked about Zeke, he said "No." He couldn't think of anything else. No, no, no. No trouble.

"Would you say you were raped?"

"What?"

"Who was present in the shower room?"

"No."

"You have two cracked ribs, a broken finger, a concussion - don't you want who did this behind bars?"

"What?"

He felt stupid and slow. Merkel frowned and O'Halloran's pale eyes were cold. They gave up after an hour. "We'll be back," they said and he giggled into his hands despite the pain in his chest.

*

His father gives him a disgusted look when he thinks Casey isn't looking and says, "I'm gonna watch the game." He doesn't close the door when he leaves.

His mother brings him a glass of milk. He can't make himself eat, but the milk is cool and sweet, soothing. She sits on the side of the bed, her hands folded on her lap. "I wish you'd talk to us, Casey," she says. "What's happening to you?"

He wants to, for a second. It's on the tip of his tongue. He wants to, and he wants to put his arms around her and cry into her collar for a while. He's tired. _Mommy, mommy, mommy._

"The doctors talked to us - and the police..." She has something on the tip of her tongue too, he thinks and keeps his mouth closed around his words. His hand's warming the milk through the glass. His hand is cold and the milk is lukewarm. "That they suspect that. That you were..." He wonders if she can say it. He makes a bet with himself. Ten bucks says she won't. "...sexually assaulted," she bites out and he mentally hands over ten dollars to himself. At least she's still looking at him.

"I wasn't," he says. That was easy.

"But--"

He's not going to explain. He puts the half-empty glass on the table and lies down. "I'm tired," he says.

*

He might have had nightmares, but he can't remember them when he wakes up. The room looks wrong somehow, everything in the wrong place. He crawls out of bed and goes to the window. It's clear and moon-bright, a beautiful night with frost silver on the ground.

He gnaws on his knuckles and stares at the street below. After a while, he pushes up the window and takes in deep breaths of the cold, crisp air. It hurts to breathe, but the air in his room was suffocating him, making his stomach turn.

He leaves the window open and goes back to sit on the bed. It's a quarter past one in the morning. He takes one of the horsepills they gave him for the pain and finds a pair of clean jeans. It's hard to put on pants with only one good hand.

He stuffs the bottle of painkillers in his pocket. Sneakers are also tricky with the broken index finger jutting in the way. Bending over hurts, and he has to straighten up between shoes to breathe slowly and wait for the dark spots to stop dancing in front of his eyes. He listens for sounds in the house. Nothing. His parents are asleep.

When he's done getting dressed, the painkillers have kicked in and it's easier to move. They make him a little dizzy and slow, like his head has been stuffed with cotton, but it's not so bad that he can't deal.

When he has one leg outside the window, he stops for a second and looks down. The fall is a good eight feet into sharp-branched bushes. He hums a bar or two of _Living On The Edge_, tunelessly and mirthlessly, and lifts his other foot onto the roof.

He has to stop every three breaths or so because his head spins faster when he moves and the sky is too high up above and the ground is too far down below. Spin, spin, spin, the world goes round in circles, like an eagle hovering, although he's not sure if he's the eagle or maybe the world. Not much of an eagle if that's what he is. He doesn't think he can fly, definitely doesn't want to try. The bad hand protests being used at all and with every move, the effect of the painkiller wears off. The good effects, of course. The dizziness stays.

Look, ma, no hands. He has to lean onto his battered ribcage to find the trellis with his feet and the world darkens threateningly, darkens around the edges and then shrinks quickly to a single pinpoint of fresh white starlight somewhere far off. Really far away. It feels like he's falling already. The world tilts backwards and he waits for the impact.

His feet find purchase and the darkness falls back when he shifts his weight off his chest.

It's not until he's on the ground, taking slow, agonising breaths to stop the dizziness, that he realises he wasn't afraid for a second up there, just tired and sick. He must be stupid - his bed is up there, clean sheets and soft pillow and the blanket to pull over if he's cold. Instead, he's down here with no way of getting up. It's cold.

He looks up at the sky and thinks he sees a bat fly over, a noiseless black spot of fluttering movement.

He walks.

The street seems to have become a curvy, narrow road since he last walked down it. He keeps ending up in the gutter, stumbling over the curb, the sound of his sneakers shuffling over asphalt turning into the muted crackle of brittle-frozen grass.

He runs out of breath and leans against a tree and closes his eyes. He pictures his bed, soft and inviting, pictures lying down in it and he could just sleep, once he learns how to breathe again. He woke up curled around his pillow.

He opens his eyes and walks on. After a few blocks, he realises that he forgot to put on a proper shirt. He's in his sleeping tee under the jacket, and it's not quite warm enough for an Ohio winter's night. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Bad planning. He's dragging his feet, not by choice. He can't seem to lift them very high. He stops for a while and feels his kneecaps shake. His calves are burning. He forgot his watch too, so he doesn't know how long he's been walking, but it feels like ages. The streets all look the same around here, only the names on the mailboxes change. He's not on his own street anymore, at least. He looks around. There's a large oak on his left. He doesn't remember it.

He must have taken a wrong turn, walking with his eyes half shut, just listening to the zombie shuffle of his steps and the tired rustling of the wind in the naked trees.

He starts walking again, and it's almost like sleepwalking now, everything fading around him, until it's just this step and the next and the one after that. He can't get lost in his own neighbourhood. The thought is ridiculous and he'd laugh if his chest didn't hurt so.

He's walking in the middle of the street. He has a sneaking suspicion that he's ended up in some kind of fucked up timewarp and he's walking up the same street over and over. That would explain how tired he is, how his legs ache and his lungs burn.

He's forgotten something. Apart from a sweater and his watch and socks.

A payphone appears - _magically!_ his brain supplies - around the next corner. Dust-red neon light around it, a jolt after the clean white lamplight everywhere else. He thinks he makes a little sound, a sob of relief or something like that. He wipes his face and his hand comes away wet.

Inside the booth, he leans against the glass and presses his face flat against its dirt-streaked surface. He lets his mind drift, allows it this time, as opposed to those other times when it just drifted into nothingness all on its own.

He doesn't have his guard up, it seems, because he drifts to places he'd like to stay out of. Shower rooms, for example. No need to relive that, once was enough.

He thinks Gabe should have slammed his head a little harder against the wall and closed off the memory forever. Or killed him. He considers that possibility for a while. He can see himself dead. Not a good way to die, naked on the grungy floor, but what way is good, other than in your own bed at ninety-two? He can see himself dead, his open eyes filling with water from the showers. All of _them_ recoiling when they realise.

More painful if Zeke and Delilah come to find him dead; he wouldn't wish that on them, but if he can wish himself dead, he can wish them away. In this universe where Casey is dead, Zeke and Delilah have run off together in Zeke's car. Like Mickey and Mallory, free and wild.

That hurts, and he brings them back. Not without me, his dead self begs.

Something pinches him in the side and he jerks upright. His ribs protesting as he was sinking into crouched-backed sleep against the glass. Really sleeping on his feet, shivering cold and his brain won't come back from the drifting expedition. He can't quite catch his train of thought. He's picked up the receiver. It lies heavy and plastic-black in his hand. He stares at it and tries to blink it into focus.

He has no change. He digs through his pockets and knows he'll cry, too tired not to cry over no change, lost, lonely, hurt, poor Casey, poor Casey. His fingers close around a - _magical!_ \- quarter half-buried in lint and he cries with gratitude instead. God _wants_ me to call, he thinks, dazed, and pushes the lint-fuzzy quarter through the slot.

Dial tone. Says _dial_. Not just the quarter that's fuzzy, there's some serious fucking fuzziness happening otherwhere...otherwise. In other places. He doesn't remember the number. He stares at his hand on the dial. It's supposed to know what to do. He's drifting again, he thinks, but he can't stop it. Hospital bed, pleasant to think about now, and Delilah's mouth with the sharp little tick of the stitched lip. Zeke's mouth.

He blinks and knows he knows Zeke's number. He's called it before. Many times. He's punched in the numbers at home, on his own phone, on the phone in the living room; dialed them on the school payphone, he's had the digits written down on a piece of paper. It's still in his wallet, for fuck's sake and why didn't he take his wallet? Money might have been a good idea, stupid stupid stupid. He's crying with _stupidity_ now. Back to wishing he couldn't remember anything if he had to forget the important stuff anyway. And he can almost feel the number, it's just covered with a lot of lint in some giant pocket in his brain.

He's sobbing out loud now, frustrated sounds. He's trying to hold it back because all that sobbing and crying hurts. It hurts more to fight it but he can't let it go or he'll never get out of here. He'll be stuck crying like a baby in this fucking phone booth till morning, till the garbage men come and knock and ask him what the hell he's doing.

He shakes his head and it bounces off the glass. Brief, white pain shoots a splinter through the left side of his skull, cracks a whip over his face and he's suddenly, brightly, awake.

He dials Zeke's number. The crying has abated, dried up. The pain sinks back to a low murmur.

"Hmmmh?" He starts crying again, helplessly. He's tired, too tired to explain. He'll stop crying when he's not exhausted. "What? Casey?" Zeke says with sleep in his voice.

His almost-sharp brain finds him the bit of info he needs, even though he doesn't quite remember acquiring it. Did he look up to see a street sign? Has he been here before? "Pritchard Avenue," he says into the receiver.

"Okay," Zeke says, "coming." He hangs up. Zeke was never one for smalltalk on the phone. _So_ Zeke. Thank God for Zeke.

He stays inside the booth, crouched on the floor, and falls asleep before Zeke shows up.


	16. Tremble

Casey watches the shadow of his eyelashes on the tabletop. The sun comes in sharp and a little painful and paints a silhouette of his face on the white surface. When he looks out of the corner of his eyes, he can see his eyelashes flutter. They're very long, made longer by the angle. He blinks and they flutter again. Once, when he was little, nine or ten, he cut off his own eyelashes. In retrospect, he should be happy he didn't stab himself in the eye while he was at it.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it just seems dangerous and stupid and he wants to go back in time and slap himself.

He could start with just a short little trip, though. A few days back, to say, "Hey, asshole, put a sock in it. Life's short and nasty enough without asking for more."

He probably wouldn't have listened to himself. Right now, watching his eyelashes in the warm kitchen, he remembers the feeling very clearly. Warm like now; happy unlike now.

"How do you spell that? Casey?" Merkel asks, probably not for the first time, and Casey surfaces, honey-slow in the heat.

"Um, I don't know. Like it's pronounced, I guess. Gabe-- Gabriel Santora."

He looks back at the table. He's having trouble concentrating. He wishes Zeke was here, but the cops had asked him and Delilah to please stay outside the kitchen, this would only take a few minutes. It had taken half an hour so far and Casey's head hurt just a little.

"I need my painkiller," he says. "I have to go."

"Excuse me?" O'Halloran says.

"I'm in _pain_," Casey says, sharply.

"Just a few more questions if you don't mind." _I do mind_, Casey thinks. "You can't remember exactly who was in the room?"

"There were a lot of them," Casey says. He tries to force himself to pay attention. This is probably an important interview. But he'd been having a good morning, sun-drenched and slow and sweet.

O'Halloran looks down at his notepad. "Stan Rosado. He came in later?"

Casey wants to bite his nails, but it feels like he's already twitching too visibly. "No, he was there."

"He participated in the attack?"

"No."

"He watched?"

"I don't know. I guess. I wasn't paying attention to the ones who weren't all over me." He thinks he remembers Stan looking at him. Sometime before.

"Stan Rosado claims he only came into the shower room to find you after the fact."

They closed the kitchen door. Zeke and Delilah must be piled up just outside, listening. "They're his friends. He was on the team." He almost feels sorry for Stan, who's not really an asshole. Almost. He remembers then, clearly: Stan's face framed by Gabe's arm and someone's shoulder - Lucas's maybe. Casey doesn't think he would have done anything either if their positions were reversed, but he resents it anyway. "He wouldn't rat out his buddies," he says.

He's thirsty suddenly, and the sun is hot on his head. His hair clings to his skull like a tea-cosy and if he doesn't move out of the bright spot, his brain might boil.

He gets up to pour himself a glass of water. He feels their eyes on him, sharp cop eyes checking him out.

"Why did you leave your house?" O'Halloran asks.

Casey drains his glass before he speaks. "I wanted to."

"Trouble at home?"

"No."

His head hurts now for real. The headache feels as if it's moving around in his skull, like it's alive and looking for a way out, a weak spot to punch through.

He'd woken up to the knocking. He had no memory of coming here, but he was in Zeke's bed, sandwiched between Zeke and Delilah.

Zeke woke up when Casey pushed himself up. "Hang back," he said and touched Casey's shoulder. "I'll get it."

Casey started to follow him anyway, but he realised then that he was wearing only his boxers and the tape around his ribs. He hurt, of course, and the bruises marched down his body in the shape of feet and fists. He went back to the bedroom to find his clothes. He heard Zeke open the door and a voice he recognised vaguely say "Police."

He pulled on a shirt and a pair of jeans from Zeke's closet. Swore at his own clumsiness when he struggled with the sleeves.

"I was asleep," he heard Zeke say. "No, I don't think I'll let you in."

Casey had to stop to breathe before he left the bedroom. Slow breath. "Just hang on," Zeke said. Slow breath. "What do you want?" Slow breath. "No, I don't think--"

"I'm here," Casey said and went into the hall.

*

Merkel is flipping through his notebook again. The permafrown is in place. "Your two friends..." he mutters and flips some more. "Zeke Tyler, Delilah Profitt."

There's a pause. Casey stares at his bald patch and waits for a question. He put his painkillers in his jacket pocket, didn't he? He can't remember. Last night is a blur of pain and walking and walking and crying. He can't remember thinking at all.

He blinks and notices that Merkel and O'Halloran are both staring at him.

He stops himself from apologising. "What?" he says instead.

O'Halloran eyeballs him as if he's lying about his 'what'. "We're just trying to figure out how they fit into all this. They were at the scene, weren't they? You seemed confused about this last time we met."

"I was confused last time we met, period," Casey mutters.

"Your mother said you might be here," Merkel says. "That you'd _probably_ be here." Casey waits for a question again, and the cops watch him again. He leans against the counter behind him and waits. He feels strangely calm. His breathing is slow and even, which is a fucking relief because every twitch feels in his ribs.

They'd only asked Zeke and Delilah for their names before they sent them out. Zeke was slit-eyed and contemptuous and unashamedly half-naked. Casey had been horrified for a moment - _they're COPS!_

"You could start by telling us what your relationship with Zeke Tyler is," Merkel says, finally. "This is his house, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Casey says. Now he's nervous, suddenly. His chest seems to have shrunk two sizes and there's a spike of pain in his side. He wonders if he's going to start hyperventilating and pass out. That'd be classy.

"Casey?" O'Halloran says. "Are you being coerced?"

He jumps, exhales, feels stupid; like he's guilty. Then he feels guilty for acting like he's guilty because he's making it worse. His hands feel weak. His arms shake. "No," he says. He doesn't sound convincing even to himself. "No," he says again. "I wanted to come here. I don't want to leave."

They stare at him in silence. He can hardly lift his arms to cross them. "They're my friends."

"Friends," Merkel says.

Casey thinks they have a plan. They'll keep him here until he just breaks into pieces and tells them everything.

Whatever everything is. They don't need to know about his relationship with Zeke. They don't need to know anything about any of it.

"I need to lie down," he says. He doesn't have to fake the wincing, at least. "I don't feel very good. Is that all?"

"Just a few more things--"

"No," he says, sharper than he wanted to. "I'm going to throw up." He pushes away from the counter and walks across the kitchen floor. The room seems to have grown. He notices that he wasn't lying. He really will throw up; he fights it with teeth on his tongue, picturing other places; trees, plains, dry leaves hanging still in windless air. A high, blue autumn sky with no sun in sight.

"Is it a sexual relationship?" O'Halloran asks, and Casey's pretty sure he's not imagining the sour note in the cop's voice.

He pushes the door open. Zeke and Delilah stand guard outside, quiet and hard-eyed, with no space between them.

"We're trying to help," O'Halloran says behind his back. Casey sways and Zeke grabs his arm. He's still in just his underwear, hasn't taken time to find any clothes, and that gives Casey a sharp little thrill. He thinks the nausea might settle if he could lie down in Zeke's bed and pull the cover over his ears. He walks down the corridor to the bathroom instead, waves Zeke and Delilah off and locks the door behind him.

"Casey, are you okay?" Zeke asks urgently behind the door.

"No," he says. "I will be. I just need--" He regrets locking them out. They could all be in here, hidden and locked away.

Zeke again, angry: "Would you hotshots leave him the fuck alone already?"

Delilah, quickly, soothing: "I really don't think he wants to talk to you anymore. Maybe you could come back later. Postpone this for a few hours?"

"We can wait," one of the cops says. "Casey? Unlock the door."

"Hey, fucking say please," Zeke snarls and Casey wants to slap him for being a stupid fuck and wants to wrap himself around him; wants to throw his aching body against his.

"We'd like a few words with you, too."

"Look," Delilah's saying. "Maybe this can all be--"

"Why so twitchy, Zeke?" Casey can't tell the cops apart from behind the door. Maybe they were both the same person. Clone cops. "You got something to hide?"

And the other one, lowering his voice: "Maybe nothing happened in that shower room."

"Maybe he slipped on the soap."

"Maybe you slapped him around."

"Are you accusing him of something?" Delilah asks brightly. There's a thump on the door, as if someone's shoved against it. Casey presses his ear against it and pretends he can hear Zeke's heartbeats through the wood. He can't, but the thought is romantic, melodramatic, like the thought of Zeke taking a bullet for him.

"Get the fuck out," Zeke says. His voice is very close to Casey's ear.

"We can talk here or we can talk at the station."

"About what, exactly?" Delilah says. She's the only one who still sounds like she has all her marbles in the same bag. The cops' voices are vibrating with eagerness; Zeke's is like a mudslide, anger layered over anger. Casey's hand slides trembling over the doorknob. He breathes shallow and fast, tries not to whimper with each breath.

"Assault, dealing, being a punk ass."

"You got anything more than attitude?" Zeke asks. "Hey! Hands off!" There are more thumps and a muffled voice saying "Don't make us get out the cuffs--" and Casey opens the door.

*

He wakes up because someone is whispering in his ear. "Casey, Casey, Casey." A warm hand on his side, skin on his skin, skirting the bandage. "Casey, Casey, wakey."

He burrows into the pillow and ignores the hand, ignores the familiar pinch of pain in his ribs.

"Casey, come on. You have to see this. Is that your mother?"

He opens his eyes too wide, too suddenly, and the light stings viciously. Delilah's crouched by his side.

"Is what my mother?" he asks, or tries to. What comes out is a dry whisper. He swallows painfully.

"I just spotted her through the window."

Her hands are gentle on his side, solicitous. Casey the invalid. He leans on her and shuffles into the living room, squinting in the light. What time is it? The cops finally left at one PM and Zeke almost had to carry Casey to bed by then. It's still light now but he feels like he's slept for a hundred years. When he looks out the window, he thinks me might see a scaffold of thorny branches scraping against the glass.

Instead, he sees his mother's little Nissan parked on the side of the street. Mom in the driver's seat, sitting ramrod-straight and staring ahead.

"She's been there half an hour already," Zeke says. Casey turns away from the window. "I don't know what she's doing. Is that what she calls a stakeout?"

"Maybe she's scared of you," Delilah says. "They both think you're the big bad wolf."

"I _am_ the big bad wolf," Zeke says. He touches Casey's shoulder and Casey gives himself five seconds - leans into the touch and breathes slowly - before he ducks under Zeke's arm and goes to find his shoes.

*

His mother is crying. Casey stands in the shadow of the Gordons's house and watches her, waits for her to notice him. He knows Zeke and Delilah are watching from the window. He told them not to come out. Zeke wanted to. Zeke wants a fight. Casey thinks Zeke'd bitchslap Casey's mother if he got close enough.

He steps out of the shadow and the sun attacks him with harsh brightness. He squints and counts back from ten. She still hasn't noticed him and he decides she's not likely to.

He walks up instead and knocks on the window. "Mom?"

She flinches.

She wipes her face surreptitiously before she turns her face to him. She's still in her office makeup and it's racooned around her eyes. In the midday light, she looks old and haggard. Worn, cheap and boring. She looks like a housewife even though she's not. Casey remembers Zeke's mother; beautiful, vicious and someone who'd never deign to talk to Casey's mother.

She opens the car door. Casey looks at her sad, grooved face and thinks he might be adopted. Hopes it. He used to wish he had a brother or a sister. Now he just wishes he wasn't attached to this family at all.

"I was--" she starts. "How are you, Casey?"

He has no idea what to say to that. "Fine," is an obvious lie. "Like shit," is only half true and he doesn't feel like explaining and she's staring at him as if he might explode in a shower of shrapnel and sparks without warning.

"Won't you come home," she says. "You're not well. We want what's best for you."

He tries to believe her. She wants what's best. She sat outside here, waiting. Like she's afraid...or like she couldn't decide if she really wanted to see him.

"Not now," he says and his voice sounds cutting and harsh in his own ears. In hers too, he thinks, because she starts crying again.

"Where did we go wrong?" she asks, her voice trembling and thin, like an old woman's. He tries to imagine a world where that question isn't a meaningless cliché. "What happened?"

"You fucked up," he says. It isn't supposed to be true. His voice is flat; he can't even imagine what his face looks like. He doesn't feel angry. "You fucked me up. Too late. Your fault."

Her face crumples and he feels a quick flare of satisfaction. She has no defences. He almost wishes she was vicious like Zeke's mother so there would be something to fight, not just this pathetic thing. She never fights back.

She pulls the car door closed and starts the car. He might not look like her, he realises, but he _is_ like her. He stands in the street after she's gone. The sun is bright, but not very warm. It's a dead calm day and the last leaves hang limp and scattered on almost naked branches. Casey scratches his cheek absently and it hurts. He forgot the stitches. It hurt to lift his arm, too.

*

He pulls the curtains in Zeke's room and crawls into bed again. Staying awake for a second longer seems like unnecessary torture. He can feel them hovering outside the door, like benevolent spirits. It's hard to find a comfortable position. He must have tensed up out there, overtaxed the muscles in his back and chest. He listens to his own breaths, the hiss of inhale, the whoosh of exhale. Amazingly, they stay outside the room. He hears a whisper and a soft thud against the door; they're there, both of them. He listens to his lungs again.

He thinks he should cry, but the window for crying has closed. Even picturing his mother's face with tears running down her cheeks doesn't make him cry. Thinking about the shower room doesn't feel like anything. He'd looked up from the floor with water in his eyes and saw their legs around him, legs and their dicks and their flat stomachs and their broad football player chests. He couldn't see their faces, just blurs of white and brown. And the cops saying, "We're just trying to figure out what really happened," and their eyes on Zeke. "What's still going on."

Casey'd put his hand on Zeke's arm and felt the muscles tighten. He was worried there, for a few dizzy moments, that Zeke would just snap and shoot the cops or something. Worried, maybe. He looked at O'Halloran's suspicious face and Merkel's grumpy, judgmental face and he was worried for Zeke. And throughout, he thought, _die, die, die, die_.

"You ever done any sports, Zeke?" O'Halloran asked. "Been on the team?"

"No," Zeke said and was perfectly still.

"Casey?"

"No," Casey said and was perfectly still.

"You've fingered half the Herrington Hornets here," Merkel had said.

Casey feels the bed move under him. He breathes softly and opens his eyes. Delilah's hair brushes his face. Zeke makes a quiet, muffled noise that Casey recognises. That he misses. Zeke's right beside him, has turned his face to him and stares. Delilah straightens up and then arches back. Casey can see her body outlined against the window. Expensive, glossy porn. Zeke's hands on her waist. He meets Zeke's eyes.

"Casey," Delilah says and moves. Zeke makes that noise again, a little _hmmmmm_. "Casey," Delilah says and reaches for him. Casey watches her hand, just a black outline in the dark.

 

He flinches, surprising himself. Hard to breathe again, all the places they broke on him crying out. Reminders.

Delilah and Zeke are frozen. Casey pushes himself up and almost falls off the bed, gets his legs to carry him and staggers a few steps. There's just enough light in the room to see them on the bed, motionless - a statue titled _Fuck_.

Then they do move, separate and come towards him, still naked and sweat-gleaming, tousled hair and dark eyes. "No," he says before they can touch him.

They stop. Delilah makes a small, frustrated gesture, a half-shrug. Zeke runs his hand through his hair. Casey stares at Zeke's hand and hates how things have changed. When did _no_ start meaning something? Zeke looks almost meek. Almost afraid. Almost--

"Fuck," Zeke says. He straightens his back and his hands curl into fists. "Fuck."

Casey opens his mouth to say something. Zeke spins around and walks out of the room.

"Zeke--" Delilah says and Casey closes his mouth again. He wouldn't have known what to say anyway. There's a crash of breaking glass from the hall. The pain in his chest rises towards his throat, angry hands clawing upwards. He thinks he hears Zeke scream something but it doesn't even sound like English. The room is very dark and it's like the darkness muffles all sounds too, like it eats the sounds and he can't even hear his own breathing, just a black, smothering silence.

Then he can't breathe at _all_. He chokes and sputters, coughs and fights back. Opens his eyes. The room has changed; the proportions are fucked and everything's in the wrong place. Except Delilah's face right in front of his eyes.

"Fuck, Casey, would you knock it off?" she says. He can feel carpet under his back. Gravity is a blanket weight on his chest and arms and legs. He's lying down, flat on the floor. Delilah hovers above him and somewhere behind her, above her, Casey can see Zeke move restlessly. "You were hyperventilating like a teenager at a Backstreet Boys concert."

She's smiling, just barely, a little crooked Delilah-smile, but her voice has a tremble and a crack in it. He swallows. "What did you do?"

"You wanna get up?" She offers him a hand.

The floor feels safe and solid. "No," he says. She sits down next to him. She looks a little cold now.

"You wanna stay on the floor?"

"Yeah," he says. He can almost see her fighting down something sarcastic. That feels wrong, like Zeke backing off feels wrong. He stares at the ceiling for a while, but soon his eyelids feel heavy again and he lets them fall shut.

"I want to kill something," Zeke says somewhere far away.

"Not now," Delilah whispers, very close to Casey, almost inside his head. She fades to nothing. He stares up at faces in helmets, behind visors. He can't recognise any of them, even though he knows he should.

"Gabe Santora," he tells the cops, "Lucas Bronheim, Jon Raymond, Jarr Hatton, Gordon Mannheim--" He should know their faces but they're all strangers. "Are you sure?" Merkel says. "This is half the football team."

"We have to do it now," he says. "Soon." He opens his eyes and he's still on the floor, covered in a blanket. There's a pillow under his head.

"Do what?" Delilah says. She's sitting on the bed, wearing one of Zeke's shirts and her own pants. Zeke is on the floor, leaning against her leg.

"Go after Gabe," Zeke says. Maybe he had the same dream, Casey thinks. His body aches dully in too many places to differentiate. Just a whole-body pain, wholesale suffering. When he tries to sit up, it all converges in his chest and he has to remind himself to breathe. He can't remember when he last took his painkillers. Now might be a good time.

"What do you want to do?" Zeke asks. He hasn't moved. Neither of them has. Casey wants to press his hands against his aching chest - they move up already, reflexively - like pushing at the pain would help. He wants hands on him.

"I want," he says, a little breathlessly because he still doesn't always remember to pull in new breaths. "I want them to pay." He's not sure he believed he'd want that. Now that he's said it, he knows better. "I want _him_ to pay."

Zeke moves. Just a few feet between them but it seems too far to bridge. Zeke reaches for Casey. "How?" he asks. He's pulled his legs under him into a crouch.

"I don't know," Casey says, "I don't know, I've never--" Zeke's hand closes on his arm. "Your gun," Casey says when Zeke reels him in, half-carefully. "I'd make him suck it. I want to blow his head off but maybe it's not." It's hard to breathe again, but easy at the same time. Zeke's fingers dig hard into his bruised arms. "--necessary."

Zeke's breath is hot on his face, but it's Delilah who says, "Who cares about necessary? He fucking _pissed_ on you." A cold shiver runs through Casey and slumps in Zeke's grip. "Destroy him." Delilah probably wants it for herself, he thinks. Delilah in the hall with Gabe's arm around her waist. Who needs logic when you have anger?

Zeke leans in and kisses him hard. Casey doesn't flinch. He opens his mouth for Zeke and the cold shiver melts into heat. He runs out of breath but he doesn't care. Zeke has clamped onto his arms and isn't letting go, like Casey might - ha ha ha - run away. That should have been clear a long time ago; there's nowhere to run. This is where he runs, Zeke's hands and tongue and teeth and Delilah's hungry eyes. His lungs twitch and he has to pull in a breath of damp, recycled air that feels as crisp and fresh as a lungful of cool tundra air far from interstates and smokestacks. Zeke's somehow pulled him into his lap and Casey's chest burns. He snaps for air and gets Zeke's mouth again, and a mouthful of hair, long black hair. He turns his head blindly to Delilah, her fingers on his lips, her hair twined round them. "Not kill," she whispers. "Destroy."

"Kneecaps?" Zeke whispers. Casey leans back, pressure on his tired arms, Zeke's vicelike grip. He tries to imagine Gabe's face. Zeke with a tire iron, it'd be quick and vicious. Casey couldn't. He'd miss and make a mess of it. He leans back more and they follow him all the way to the floor. There are hands on his legs, teeth on his throat. "I'd disembowel him." Zeke's voice is a low buzz against Casey's skin.

"The fucker," Delilah says. Her hair is gone from Casey's face, just Zeke's rough bristles against his cheek now. Delilah's hands are stroking his legs, he thinks, it must be hers because Zeke is holding his face and tilting his chin up and nipping at his collarbone. "You should piss on him. You should cut up his face and piss in the wounds, Casey."

Casey only gasps because she's slipped cool fingers under the waistband of his pants, no, into his fly, she's unzipped and she's pushing his pants down. He didn't even notice. Zeke nips hard on a spot on his chest, close to somewhere sore and broken, almost too close but not quite. He can't close his mouth anymore, the air is too heavy to breathe. He can see Gabe on his knees, almost, almost, but he doesn't know how to get there. It makes him tremble, just the thought of it. Want, want, want but he can't see himself there.

Zeke could do it and not feel a single touch of fear but Casey's already afraid, even when Zeke bites again - a good-bye bite - and slithers down his body. Casey hears himself whimper. Zeke's mouth is hot and fast and ruthless. "I want--" he gasps, "I want to." His hips jerk up and it hurts everywhere and he can't stop it. Delilah leans over him. Her eyes are completely black in the dark.

"Whatever you want, Casey," she says.

He doesn't know. Right now, he doesn't want anything more than to lie here and turn the pain into something good and hot and right. He's only touched Zeke's gun once. He thought he'd never want to do it again.

Delilah's hair feathers over his face again, cobwebs, silk, butterflies. "Not alone," she says. Duh. "You don't have to do it alone," she says. Zeke pushes his hand between Casey's legs and his reply, not quite thought out anyway, comes out as a moan.

He tried to grab their legs, he remembers, to pull them off balance. To scratch them and somehow make them fucking stop, but they were slippery with water and soap and his fingers slid over their skin without doing any harm. None of them bent down so he could reach their faces, claw at their eyes. He couldn't throw a single punch, even though he remembers with photographic clarity what it felt like to pound Gabe's face in. He doesn't think he can do it again.

He throws his head back too fast, it hurts, but he cries out because he's running with heat, the worst aches are blazing with heat, Zeke's fingers and tongue are like acid burns on his skin. He could, he could, he could do something if he had a plan, a plan, a gun, enough hate - he has years of it, listed alphabetically in his head.

He lifts his hand, first the broken one but he remembers and lets it fall back to the floor. The other one then, his fingers in Delilah's thick, satin-glossy hair, pulling her down. She comes freely - she doesn't like having her hair tugged, but he's not going to care because she comes to him and there is no sarcastic little smile on her face, just her black eyes and her lips parted for a kiss.

"Are you sure?" the cops asked him more times than he remembers, like they thought he was still concussion-confused and forgetting. Now he's sure enough. His t-shirt is damp and tight around him, soaked with sweat because he's so hot he thinks he might be steaming.

He just stops trying not to and bucks up and opens his mouth against Delilah's and screams it out.

*

There's a second, what feels like a second but it might be more, of darkness and silence and then weak light and Delilah's voice in his ear. "I'm gonna love every second of it." Zeke's eyes are as dark as hers, dark and gleaming. His mouth tastes of come. Casey slips out of the kiss and into sleep. On his painfully heaving chest, Delilah's hand is curled around Zeke's fingers.

*

"I hope you're feeling better," Principal Drake says. "Do you have any idea when you'll be coming back to school?"

"No," Casey says. She taps her fingers on the desk.

"What a mess this is, Casey." She smiles, a small sad smile. What a mess, what a mess. Casey looks at her fingers. She uses very dark red nail polish. "I'm very sorry that you were hurt. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

He can hear the _but..._ coming a mile away. He heard it when his mother called Zeke's house to tell him they had an appointment with the Principal.

"You've had...disagreements with Gabe in the past." She's still smiling a little. "Your mother has told me about your friends."

"What?"

"Let's just say that _I've_ had my disagreements with Zeke in the past."

"Yeah? He's had disagreements with the entire faculty."

"Exactly."

There's a pause, as if she's trying to drop a hint. Casey sits still. He's a lot less twitchy these days. It's easier to stop yourself from squirming when squirming brings nasty stinging chestpain. Easier to walk tall when slouching brings nasty stinging chestpain - he walked through the hall up to the principal's office between Zeke and Delilah. It might have been one of those moments in a lifetime drama when the soundtrack swells in the background and the put-upon hero lifts his head for the first time. It could have been, but Gabe was there with his parents, outside the door. Casey had to look down or give himself away. Gabe sneered and Casey looked away. He felt Delilah grab Zeke's arm behind his back.

"Casey?" He looks up and realises he's zoned her out entirely. "The boys you named are denying all charges, you realise."

He nods carefully. His parents had showed up after a few minutes and it was a fucking zoo. If he hadn't been so uncomfortable, he might have thought it was funny. Delilah and Zeke were eyeballing Gabe, Gabe was staring at Casey, Gabe's parents were staring at Casey's parents, Casey's parents were staring at Zeke and Delilah. Casey'd stared at the floor and thought about knives.

"So we have a little problem. You're accusing them of attacking you unprovoked, they're accusing you of attacking them."

He blinks. That was original. "So they broke my ribs in self-defence?"

"You attacked Gabe's earlier this year," she says. "I'll be straight with you. Incidents like this are not good for the school."

"Oh," he says. He knew this was coming but it's still kind of amazing to sit here and actually hear her say it. He wonders what she told Gabe. "There are witnesses," he says, keeping his voice soft.

She leans forward. He used to have a little crush on her a few years ago, just a side gig to the big obsession with Delilah. Delilah seemed too close, too important to use for crude sexual fantasies. He had one about Drake's desk, being caught between her legs and finding out what she wore or didn't wear under those immaculate skirts. There's still a little memory of that whistling in the back of his head. He wonders if she realises what effect she has on the male population in the school.

Probably. No doubt. "Gabe took Stanley's place as captain of the team. Zeke... he's hardly someone you want to drag into a courtroom. And Delilah." She pauses and tilts her head a little, looking at him with birdlike intention. "You know, I still don't know how Delilah figures into this. The detectives don't seem to, either."

"She doesn't--"

"Gabe's girlfriend? Zeke's girlfriend? _Your_ girlfriend? I'm curious, Casey."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Connect the dots, Casey," she says. She's still leaning forward, her mouth a little pursed, her eyes soft. _I want to help you_, her body tells him. He doesn't trust it. "Trials are public and unpleasant. Your parents just want you to stop getting into trouble. You just want to be left alone, I'm sure. Gabe and his friends just want to play ball. What does Delilah want? All that speculation."

She's caught his eyes and she knows how to hold them. When she got the job as principal, he remembers, everyone seemed to think the happy days were here. The old principal was a hardass. By now, everyone knows Drake is a hardass too.

"What do you want me to do?" he says, only half-reluctantly. It's almost a relief to have it over with. Her eyes crinkle when her smile widens.

*

The room outside her office is a war zone under ceasefire. His parents get up when he comes through the door, and Gabe's parents do the same. They look like decent folk, plain and ordinary like his own parents. Gabe's mother wears a hideous purple suit. Casey thinks his own mother would have complimented it under different circumstances.

Gabe meets his eyes. Casey stops for a second because he can't look away now. Heat creeps up his back. He wonders if he's blushing, what that looks like to Gabe. His palms are sweaty and there's a creak in his legs when he moves, like he actually froze for a second and is thawing slowly in the heat. Gabe blinks and breaks eye contact, but when Casey passes him, he moves closer and says, _sotto voce_, "See you in school, Casey."

"See _you_ in school, Gabe," Delilah shoots back when Casey is trying to speak through the heat. Zeke snickers.

"Casey--" his mother says but Casey walks past her out into the hall again, Zeke and Delilah right behind him. It's cooler there, easier to breathe.

Delilah puts her hand on his shoulder and when he turns his head towards her, she leans in and kisses him. He thinks maybe he actually hear the string score swell then, when people around them do almost cartoonish double-takes. Zeke's laughing behind them.

Delilah's smile is whip-sharp. "We need a plan," she says.


	17. Come

"_Sounds like you're having fun, Zeke. I trust you'll be able to deal with whatever trouble you've gotten yourself into on your own. I've told Principal Drake that already. Don't call me back._" The machine makes a cheerful beep and whirr and turns off.

"Your mom's a piece of work," Casey says, not without compassion. Zeke shrugs.

"Had to get it from somewhere, I guess." He rewinds the answering machine tape. "Fucking bitch."

Delilah smooths her shirt along her stomach. She has a feeling she might be losing her figure. Not losing, per se. It's promising the potential of softening in the foreseeable future. She's been neglecting practice. She hasn't been paying attention to things she should pay attention to.

Casey puts a hand over hers. His hands aren't much bigger than hers, and his body is soft where it isn't bony, nothing special at all. She wouldn't have looked twice at him...ever. Bizarre. It's bizarre to the point of being incredible.

"Did Drake call your mom, too?" Casey asks. Behind him, Zeke's pulled the cassette out of the machine and is making tape salad.

"Nah," Delilah says, fascinated. Zeke's mommy issues would be amusing if she could stop herself from feeling sorry for him. Whatever happened to ironic distance? "Drake knows how much good _that'd_ do."

"Hmm?" He seems preoccupied, rubbing her fingers between his, head bent. She can look down on him even when he lifts his head. The hand with the splint hangs idle by his side. He's stopped forgetting about it by now - the first few days he kept bumping into things with the splinted finger.

"I don't think your mother's been to any more PTA meetings than mine," Zeke says.

"She never remembers," Delilah says and both Zeke and Casey nod with a sort of resigned sympathy - Oh yeah, fucked up parents, been there, done that, got the lifelong traumas to prove it. What a bunch of rejects we are, she thinks, and the thought doesn't feel as foreign as it should.

*

At home she checks her own messages for the first time in over a week. She's not even sure how long she's been ignoring the machine. Everything else just seemed more important. Fifteen messages.

"--rehearsal? Hello? Are you coming? Call me!" --_beep_\-- "Are you okay? Call me." --_beep_\-- "Your mom's not sick or anything?" --_beep_\-- "--Mr Tate's freaking out about the presentations, you better show up soon--" --_beep_\-- "--happened with Gabe?" --_beep_\-- "--things are getting really weird. Why aren't you in school? The cops were asking--" --_beep_\-- "--is saying you and Gabe beat up Casey Connor in the shower, but we asked Stan and he got kinda snippy. You're not _really_ dating Zeke, are you? Gabe--" --_beep_\-- "--rehearsals. We're running out of time and we just have to--" --_beep_\--

She turns the machine off and goes downstairs. There are dirty dishes on every horizontal surface in the kitchen and a big stain of something greasy on the living room carpet. Her mother sits curled up in the couch with a cup of coffee, watching the Tonight Show.

"Hasn't Marisa been here?" Delilah asks.

"I fired her," her mother says without looking away from Jay Leno. "Where have you been?"

"You what?"

"New boyfriend? Stan came by here...sometimes. He said you guys broke up."

"Why did you fire her? Was she stealing the silver? What?"

"I like Stan. I thought he'd be a son-in-law I could love."

Delilah turns off the TV. "Mom. Marisa. Do I have to call her and ask?"

"I was watching that. I feel better. I can take care of the house myself."

"As we can see."

She puts down her coffee. Her hands aren't shaking too bad - maybe she's just tired and not hung over. "You haven't exactly been helpful, Delilah."

She's starting to look old. Not just parent-old, but seriously lined and grooved. Her roots are at least an inch of grey-streaked brown under the chestnut. Four years since Dad died and she still hasn't picked herself up. Delilah has a feeling she never will.

She sits down next to her mother. It always seemed strange to her: letting his death beat you down completely. She mourned her father, she still misses him, but it wasn't the end of the world. She'd thought about Stan sometimes, thought about what it would feel like if he suddenly died. She wouldn't have become a miserable drunk over him, that's for sure.

"I've been busy," she says, because she really doesn't want to explore worst case scenarios. The worst case scenarios look worse now.

"They called from school, said you hadn't been there. Told them you were sick."

"Thanks, mom."

Her mother sniffs and sips coffee. "You don't tell me anything anymore."

"I never did," Delilah says. She takes her mother's empty cup when she goes back to the kitchen to call Marisa. She doesn't do the dishes, though.

*

Casey isn't in school. Zeke isn't in school. Gabe isn't in school.

Delilah is in school, sitting at the back of the class, leaning against the wall, tapping her fingers against her leg. There's whispering up front, she can tell. She smiles and rubs her thigh slowly, pushes the hem of her dress up higher.

She'd walked into school at ten, two hours late. They gathered around her like a gaggle of chickens and she walked right past them all.

She's wearing a red dress; an Yves Saint Laurent she took from her mother's closet. It falls past her knees, clasps at her neck, leaves her back bare. She's not wearing anything at all underneath it. Mariel had gasped when she saw Delilah coming up the steps. "Oh my goooood, Delilah, that's a gorgeous dress! Where have you been! What's--" She broke off when Delilah elbowed past her, smiling.

She smiles wider now, looks out the window at the bare branches of the elm on the lawn.

She's walking back out to her car, the dress fluttering around her legs.

"Delilah, is it true--"

"Delilah, come on, tell--"

"Delilah, why did--"

She stops and turns around. Her hair falls heavy and soft over her neck. It looks perfect, she knows. It looks effortless. The girls stand in an eager group on the hot asphalt of the parking lot, clucking like pigeons.

"Don't be stupid," Delilah says and smiles. Donna takes half a step backwards. Delilah walks to her car. She doesn't check in the rearview mirror, but she can feel them staring after her.

*

She kicks off her shoes in the hall. The house is murky and quiet inside closed drapes. The basement stairs creak in welcome under her bare feet.

Zeke is sitting cross-legged on the coffee table with the gun in his lap and a box of cartridges before him. Casey lies sprawled on the couch, reading one of Zeke's chemistry textbooks.

"Hello, boys," Delilah says and undoes the clasp around her neck. The top slithers down to hang around her waist. Her breasts bob softly with each step.

Casey puts down the book. His hair falls over his eyebrows when he sits up. He pushes it aside with a distracted gesture. "Hey, Delilah," he says. "How was school?"

 

She thinks his smile has changed since-- since when? Before or after the showerroom? Now there's nothing furtive about it anymore - it's sharp-toothed and feral. He doesn't move, just waits for her to come to him, bend over him and pull him closer. He nips at her breasts, his hands creeping over her ass, rumpling the dress. He still has a cast on his left hand, and it rests lightly on the small of her back as the other one pushes up the hem of the skirt.

She lifts her eyes. Zeke is watching, his hands resting on the gun.

Casey doesn't seem surprised when his fingers find nothing but Delilah under the skirt. She gasps and arches, and they push slickly into her.

"We're going down to the lake," Zeke says lazily. "Gotta teach Case to shoot."

Casey twists around to look at him, with a tiny wince - his ribs bothering him, or some other broken part - but his fingers are still moving between Delilah's legs. "Okay," he says. "Soon." He stays like that, turned towards Zeke, and Delilah touches her own breasts and comes around his curled fingers.

*

Casey's hand trembles around the gun and Zeke holds it steady for him. Delilah can't hear his voice, but she sees his Zeke's lips move, pressed close against Casey's ear, close enough that Casey must feel his breath flutter over damp skin. It isn't warm; the wind is biting and there is a promise of rain in the heavy clouds and in the limp rustling of dead leaves on the ground; but Casey looks red-faced and sweaty all the same.

_Nerves_, Delilah thinks. _He's afraid of it_. She'd fired the gun herself, earlier. She liked it; she was good at it.

Zeke steps back and raises his voice. "You don't have to be good. You don't have to hit the fucking broad side of a fucking barn, if you--"

"--don't see any fucking barn--"

"--just _look_ like you know what you're doing."

"You'll love it, Casey," Delilah says and they both turn around. Casey swings his gun arm and for a second, the muzzle of the .38 points straight at her. She presses her legs together around the tight, centered thrill. She's still sticky from earlier, and thinks the dress is ruined.

Zeke pushes the gun down with a short, frustrated gesture, but his voice is soft. "Go on, Case. Shoot."

Casey shoots him a crooked glance and raises the gun again, pointing it out across the lake. He winces - Delilah can't tell whether it's because he really doesn't want to do this or if his ribs are giving him hell - and takes a deep, shaky breath and fires. A crow takes off from a nearby willow.

Zeke whoops and slaps him on the back, and Casey fires again. Again, again, again. Delilah walks closer to them. The thrill is back, heating in her belly. The gunshots echo over the water.

"I think I've gone deaf," Casey says, letting the gun sink.

"How are your ribs taking it?" Zeke asks, rubbing Casey's chest with his open hand. Sometimes, Delilah thinks, Zeke treats Casey like a little brother.

Zeke's hand dips downward, brazenly.

Most of the time not, though.

They kiss, open-mouthed and sloppy, the gun forgotten in Casey's hand on Zeke's back. Delilah watches with nothing touching her but the dress and the wind. They're muttering things at each other; snatches of it reach her, like Zeke saying, roughly, "Stand still, stand still," as he drops to his knees on the gravel, tugging at Casey's jeans.

She walks closer because this is something just a step out of the ordinary, Zeke on his knees and Casey with the gun, the gun that comes to rest on Zeke's neck when Casey's hands land there. He looks like he wants to tangle his fingers in Zeke's hair, but there are no fingers to tangle - his right hand holds the gun and the left is clumsy and useless - so he just rubs them jerkily against Zeke's nape, the barrel of the gun catching at Zeke's shirtcollar.

Casey is biting his lips, and Delilah thinks about kissing him and biting them, too, but she stands still, letting the wind nip at her legs, and waits for him to throw his head back and cry out.

He staggers, and Zeke gets up to catch him, waggling his eyebrows at Delilah. "Fucking cold out here," he says, smiling with swollen and red lips. "We're done."


	18. Go

It's not quite dark yet. The sun has gone to hide behind the houses lining the street, but it hasn't reached the horizon. Casey stands in the thickening shadow of a burly maple, his good hand stuffed deep in his pocket, the other one hanging useless and chilly by his side. He figured, earlier, while he was slowly and painful putting on his coat, that he might need it free for this. He left the sling on Zeke's bed.

_I should feel..._ he thinks, but he's not entirely sure what he should or should not feel. He's cold, his head hurts (but not more than he can deal with). He's not afraid. He's not angry.

Pretty impossible to be afraid. This street seems very distant. Strangely distant. The effect is a little like what you get if you pull back the camera and zoom in at the same time; he forgets the technical term. He knows he's known it, not long ago. He can find the place in his memory the word used to occupy, but there's just a hole there now. A little patch of nothing, that kind of teasing nothing that says, _"There used to be something here, but tee hee, you're late for the show."_ The brain is a funny thing. Maybe someone's foot kicked the memory loose and gave him that blank spot. Maybe it was Gabe. He almost hopes so - there's the anger now, catching up with him. A little snake of anger slithering through his gut.

A car passes, a switch is hit somewhere. Now he's afraid, too, shaking with it, and he closes his hand around the cool, smooth, slick barrel of the gun. That only makes the shivers worse. The gun is not reassuring. The anger snake slithers away and hides. He tells himself he's just cold, but lying to himself this blatantly isn't going to work. He fidgets with a loose thread in the pocket, but his fingers return to the gun. The index finger slides into the trigger guard.

"Fuck," he whispers fiercely to the darkening street. "Fuck, fuck."

He starts walking, and in the corner of his eye, he sees a shadow melt and move, following him. They're out there, not far away but a hell of a lot more inconspicuous than he is, skulking along hedges and ducking behind fences when he's right out here in the open. If this were a horror movie, he'd be Jamie Lee Curtis and-- No, he's not even Jamie Lee, he's the girl _before_ her. The one that gets no lines apart from "Is there someone there?" before the killer stabs her in the gut and twists the knife. He has no problem at all to picture Zeke and Delilah on the prowl with dripping machetes in their bloody hands.

Casey's the one with the lethal weapon in his pocket, but he doesn't feel particularly dangerous.

He walks faster and the hedge next to him catches on his coat - maybe it reached out, the stumpy, thorny branches like hands with twisted fingers.

It's time. He stops and waits, his heart making strange twitches every second beat or so. He's cold and his head hurts. This is the house. They went through a plan, didn't they? He can't remember it, suddenly. Another shiny blank patch in his mind. Plan, plan, schman. This is the house. His fingers hurt where they cramp around the sharp angles of the gun.

It's a quiet street, a cul-de-sac off Trudeau, ending in a patch of trees - almost a forest - that turns into fields only a quarter mile away. Five houses on one side and three on the other, all hidden behind high, thick hedges. All of them about twice as large as Casey's parents' house. Rich, but not rich enough to have fences and gates. A hedge a bit down street twitches and stills. Quiet.

A door slams. Footsteps grow louder and someone steps onto the sidewalk right in front of Casey.

_I'm not the girl_, Casey thinks and pulls his hand out of the pocket. Gabe freezes. _I'm one of the monsters._

"The _fuck_?" Gabe says the second before he sees the gun. "What--"

Now the gun feels right. Warm. Powerful. Big. "Hi," Casey says, and it comes out not in the least bit shaky. Still, he doesn't really know what to say. He should say something pithy right now. The kiss-off line stays unspoken. He wants to pull the trigger and go home. But that wasn't the plan, was it?

Gabe's face is smooth-skinned and handsome, if slick and ruthless is your fancy. Casey studies his forehead and thinks about aiming for that, but he's probably not sure enough with the gun. He keeps it trained on Gabe's chest instead.

"At least you're about the size of a barn," he says, and Gabe flinches. Maybe he has some sort of trauma about barns. Casey almost giggles (it comes out a muted, aborted snort), and it seems to scare Gabe. He raises his hands, palms out. His feet shuffle slowly backwards.

"Look, look, man--"

Casey interrupts him. "I think you should shut the fuck up." They're somewhere behind him. Waiting. What would they do? Zeke would shoot first. Delilah... "On your knees," he says. He uses her voice, silky and precise. She'd say it softly, but there'd be no doubt that she means it. Casey would obey. He has. And she didn't even have a gun pointed at his chest.

Maybe he hasn't quite perfected the voice yet, because Gabe just stares at him, incredulously. Casey thinks there's a smile about to form on his face. The momentum is slipping away. Casey takes a step forward and lifts the gun an inch. Growls (with Zeke's voice now, deep and edged with anger), "Get the fuck down."

His finger is curling around the trigger. He's ready. He's so ready it's like he's done it already and it's feels _done_, it feels _right_. It feels like there's blood pooling on the cold pavement (black in the low light, like an oil slick under an old car) and the echo of the shot is bouncing between the houses.

Gabe falls to his knees with a thump. And closes his eyes.

Casey's lungs clench. This is not the plan. The plan, whatever the hell it was, has been wiped from Casey's memory.

He steps closer, close enough to touch. If he wants to. He can do what he wants. It's almost dark now and the street light just overhead is broken. Which is good, fortuitous (or forethought? He doesn't put it past Zeke's methodical brain to count it in), but it means he can't quite see Gabe's face.

He does see the glint of eye-whites when Gabe opens his eyes again. "Look," Gabe says (again), and this time Casey lets him speak. "Casey, man, don't-- Don't do anything--" He doesn't want to say 'stupid,' Casey thinks, not to the maniac with the grudge and the gun. "--you'll regret."

"Uhuh," Casey says. "You're all about regret, aren't you?" And now he's angry, grateful for the anger. He's speaking through gritted teeth. "Fucker." The gun moves closer to Gabe's head; what a great idea. he pushes it against skin, pokes until Gabe turns his face away. "Don't turn away, asshole," and Gabe turns back. Casey sees bright reflections under his eyes, on his cheeks: wet.

"Maybe you can learn something about regret," he says softly. The barrel touches Gabe's mouth, not hard, not poking. Caressing. Casey wonders what it feels like. What it would feel like. Gabe's lips twist and quiver. "Suck it," Casey says.

He meets Gabe's eyes. "Or you can suck my dick." He smiles, so wide that his healing face smarts. Maybe a stitch comes loose. Maybe he's bleeding. "Pick one."

The world is doing the zoom thing again. He thinks he hears muted sobs and tries to focus. Is it Gabe? The gun stays steady but Casey's head spins furiously. He's still grinning. His face has frozen like that. Gabe makes a choked sound. His eyes are trained at the gun, black spots in rings of frightened white, staring out of the dark.

A light goes out in the house across the street. They're right out in the open, barely hidden by the dark and the dead streetlight. The gun stays steady and Gabe snivels and coughs and reaches for Casey's fly.

Lightning-- no, a flash, a camera goes off. They're there, flanking him. Delilah smiles a straight-razor smile. Zeke's hand touches his shoulder. Casey holds the gun, butts it against Gabe's wet face, but he feels tired, suddenly, and Gabe is fumbling frantically at his fly - all of it some kind of strange half-dream, daydream, nightmare. If Gabe touches his bare skin he will vomit, he knows with bone-hard certainty.

"Go on, Case," whispers Zeke huskily in his ear. "Go on." Gabe has unsnapped the top button, and Casey shudders and almost - almost! - pulls the trigger. Something, he can't tell what, _something_ stops him and he mutters, "Fuck," under his breath. Lifts the gun from Gabe's wet face. Pulls back his foot and kicks him in the groin with everything he has.

He doesn't have a line, just another kick, another. The gun weighs down his hand, turns down to the pavement where Gabe has crumpled and curled up, trying to protect himself from Casey. Protect himself from Casey! "Die," Casey mutters and kicks again. It's hard to breathe now, he's drenched in sweat and there's a hot iron band squeezing his ribcage. "Die." His voice is a harsh croak, a frog squeaking its last in a polluted pond. The street fades again, comes back into focus, tilts violently.

Warm hands catch him and straighten up the world. "Done," Zeke murmurs in his ear, his breath startlingly hot against chilled skin. "Car's this way."

Casey lets himself be steered gently away. He hears strange sounds as he walks away. Moans and whispers, choked coughs. Muted words. He turns, dazed and dizzy, and sees Delilah kneeling over Gabe. It's too far away to see if there's any black oil-slick blood on the sidewalk.

The gun is still in his hand, his finger is still curled around the trigger. With some effort, he lifts it and puts it back in his pocket. Zeke touches his hair and leans in closer. "You were great, baby," he says. He kisses Casey, warm mouth, gentle hands. What? What? thinks Casey, lost. Baby? He leans against Zeke because his body wants it even though his mind is spinning in wider and wider circles. What? The gun in his pocket feels warm now, and waiting. It's been loaded but not fired.

He almost stops and turns - he would have, surely, a flare of heat demands it; the gun demands it. If only Zeke hadn't been so tender, so unyieldingly careful. He almost runs back, almost puts six bullets in Gabe's head. Almost, but then Delilah catches up, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, her smile still a cutting edge.

"He's done," she says and laughs. "So done. That fuck."

The heat settles somewhere in Casey's chest, coiled up (anger snake) and waiting.

*

They pile into the car, Casey carefully wedged between Delilah and the door of the passenger seat, her arms steadying him. _I'm not an invalid_, he thinks, but she strokes his face and smiles. He's very tired.

Zeke drives past Gabe's house. Gabe is still on the sidewalk, tightly curled in his protective fetal position. Casey cranes his neck, but it's too dark to make out details. He can only see an indistinct dark lump.

"He's not dead," Delilah says. Nothing in her tone suggests she's relieved.

"I can run him over a couple times," Zeke offers with a chortle, but he drives past without slowing. He knows, like Casey knows, and Delilah, that Gabe is done. The Gabe Situation is resolved for good.

The street ends and Zeke turns the car around. "What happened to the brilliant plan, Casey?" he says, not at all reproachful. His eyes glitter. "Wanted the extra thrill?"

Delilah lifts the camera - just Zeke's cheap little compact - and says, "For God's sake, don't say cheese." Casey's face twitches, but it's not really a smile. The flash goes off, the world's white, red, fading back into murk. "We should tape a copy of the best ones to the school door," Delilah says. "Maybe the one where he's got his nose pushed against Casey's crotch."

She wiggles around to kiss him, deep and long, her fingers light on his face, rubbing the cut, the torn stitches. "You're done with him, baby," she whispers. Her fingers touch his mouth, pushes against his lips. He tastes blood. His own?

"I forgot the plan," Casey says. There's a moment of silence.

"Great fucking improv," Zeke says, and they laugh, both of them. Bright, brittle sounds.

Zeke turns onto his street, driving just fast enough to throw Delilah and Casey against each other in the passenger seat. Casey is wrung out like a rag, shaky with exhaustion, but there's something wild in the car, in Delilah's mouth on his face (her teeth scrape bright pain across his hurt cheekbone), in Zeke's white-knuckled grip on the wheel. In the hot coil in Casey's stomach. It might scorch his throat coming out. He puts his tongue between his teeth and bites, as hard as he can. It's pretty hard right now, it's like pain has almost stopped being _pain_. He swallows the copper penny taste and turns his mouth to Delilah's, teeth first, and she grins against his grin. It's not even a kiss.

Zeke pulls the car into the drive and again they bang against each other, rag dolls with teeth. Delilah licks his mouth, pushes her tongue against his to get at the blood and tugs at his jeansfly. The gun in Casey's pocket digs into his side like a metal dick.

"Home, sweet, home," Zeke mutters, and he turns off the engine but doesn't get out of the car. Instead he watches Delilah and Casey. Casey meets his eyes over Delilah's shoulder. Delilah's got her hand on Casey's dick by now, and his hips are moving against her but he's thinking about Zeke. He's never fucked Zeke, it occurs to him. There's no reason not to. Not now.

Zeke grins as if he can tell and says, "Come on, kids, inside."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Void](https://archiveofourown.org/works/451896) by [dodificus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodificus/pseuds/dodificus)




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